by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, October 28, 2002 12:02 P.M. EST

Oh, Those Presidents All Look Alike
Slate, the online magazine that gave us "monkeyfishing," has also created a tiresome feature called the "Bushism of the Day." Jacob Weisberg, who succeeded Michael Kinsley as editor, scours the president's statements and takes short quotes out of context, attempting to make Bush look stupid by putting into writing his spoken quotes. This is a cheap gimmick; few people speak in polished sentences and paragraphs, and you could make almost anyone look dumb by employing the Weisberg method.

Still, today's "Bushism of the day" breaks new ground. Here it is:

"I would like to express my deep condolences for the loss of the Senate."--Commenting on Sen. Paul Wellstone's death, Crawford, Texas, Oct. 25, 2002

Now, let's go to the transcript, which is of a joint appearance with Bush and China's President Jiang Zemin. It begins with Bush speaking:

Thank you for coming, President Jiang.

PRESIDENT JIANG: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen. I just learned that one plane crashed. I would like to express my deep condolences for the loss of the Senate. And also I would like to express my condolences to the bereaved family.

Did Weisberg deliberately present Jiang's words as Bush's in a dishonest attempt to make Bush look bad? It's hard to imagine he did, and we certainly know of no reason to question the Slate editor's integrity. More likely, Weisberg was just being sloppy. Even so, this is pretty stunningly slipshod. Someone who demands perfect syntax in spoken expression ought to be more careful in his own writing.

You Don't Say--I
"Close Races to Decide Senate Control"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 26

Don't Start Thinking About Tomorrow
Remember the "age issue"? When President Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, some critics said he was too old for the job. In an October debate, he handled a question on the subject with typical aplomb:

Henry Trewhitt, Baltimore Sun: Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks, and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall, yes, that President Kennedy, who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?

Reagan: Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt, and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.

Reagan was 73. His opponent, former vice president Walter Mondale, was 17 years his junior. Two weeks later, Reagan beat Mondale in a landslide, winning every state except Minnesota.

Mondale is now 74, and he must be hoping it wasn't the age issue that turned Minnesota voters against Reagan. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports Mondale, who served as a Minnesota senator from 1964 through 1976, is "highly likely" to throw his hat into the ring and run for his old seat, replacing Paul Wellstone, who died Friday in a plane crash, as the Democratic nominee in next week's election.

Unlike in New Jersey, where the state Supreme Court deliberately misread the law to make it possible for erstwhile senator Frank Lautenberg to replace Bob Torricelli on the ballot, this is legit. As we noted Friday, Minnesota law allows for the replacement of a deceased nominee as late as four days before the election. The winner of the election takes office immediately, pursuant to subdivision 12 of this Minnesota statute:

An individual who is elected to the office of United States senator for a regular six-year term when the office is vacant or is filled by an individual appointed [by the governor] pursuant to subdivision 11, shall also succeed to the office for the remainder of the unexpired term.

Mondale probably is the Democrats' best hope of holding the Minnesota seat, even if he last won a Senate race 30 years ago. But it may be a sign of Democratic weakness that in the face of adversity, they're increasingly relying on has-beens. Are there no Democratic will-be's?

The Associated Press reports that Lilly Goren, head of the political science department at College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, "noted that Mondale is younger than Frank Lautenberg." Lautenberg, in turn, is more honest than Bob Torricelli. But that isn't saying much.

Tennis Anyone?
As we noted in the previous item, the winner of the Minnesota Senate race takes office immediately. That means if Republican Norm Coleman prevails, the GOP will immediately capture control of the chamber. (Democrats now have an effective majority of 50-49; Vermont's Jim Jeffords, though nominally an independent, votes with the Democrats.) Control will also change if Jim Talent wins in Missouri. Appointed senators, like Talent's opponent, Jean Carnahan, serve only until a replacement is elected.

The 107th Congress has already seen three shifts of Senate control:

• After six Republican years, the Senate moved to Democratic hands on Jan. 3, 2001. Democrats held a 51-50 majority, with Vice President Al Gore providing the tie-breaking vote.

• On Jan. 20, 2001, Dick Cheney became the vice president, giving Republicans a 51-50 majority.

• On June 6, 2001, Jeffords bolted the Republican party, giving Democrats an effective 51-49 majority (cut to 50-49 by Wellstone's death).

Now, imagine this scenario:

• On Nov. 5, 2002, either Talent or Coleman, but not both, wins, giving Republicans an immediate 51-50 majority.

• Sen. Frank Murkowski (R., Alaska) wins his race for governor and is inaugurated on Dec. 2, 2002, leaving the Senate and giving the Democrats a 50-49 majority.

• On Dec. 7, 2002, as Larry Sabato points out, Alaska law authorizes Murkowski (if he does become governor) to appoint his Senate replacement. He picks a Republican, returning the GOP to a 51-50 majority.

• The Democrats, assuming they suffered no net Senate losses on Election Day, retake the majority when the 108th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3, 2003.

It's possible, in other words, that control of the Senate will have changed seven times between Jan. 3, 2001, and Jan. 3, 2003.

If He Were a Republican, This Would Be Hate Speech
Alex Sanders, the Democratic nominee for Senate in South Carolina, is blasting his Republican opponent, Rep. Lindsey Graham, for running an ad featuring an endorsement from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Columbia State reports. "He's an ultraliberal," Sanders said of Giuliani during a debate Friday. "His wife kicked him out and he moved in with two gay men and a Shih Tzu. Is that South Carolina values? I don't think so."

Carter Gets the Boot
If you want to know what's going to be in the New York Times a week from now, read The Weekly Standard. In last week's issue of the magazine, our former colleague Max Boot offered this prediction:

Professional peace processors are not likely to be put off by a minor inconvenience like North Korea's brandishing of nuclear weapons. They will just see it as one more reason to redouble efforts at "engagement" (a nicer word than "appeasement").

Sure enough, yesterday's Times carried an op-ed by Walter Mondale's running mate entitled "Engaging North Korea." "What is needed on the Korean peninsula is an end to more than a half-century of "armistice" and the consummation of a comprehensive and permanent peace agreement," opines the man who negotiated the 1994 agreement that North Korea disregarded. "There is, of course, still the option of war instead of peace talks. It would be devastating and probably unnecessary."

Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Say What?
"Nations Urge N. Korea to Drop Nukes"--headline, ABCNews.com, Oct. 26

Murder in Jordan
"An American diplomat was shot dead Monday by an unknown assailant near his home in Amman," CNN reports. The victim, Laurence Foley, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. There's no word yet on the identity of the perpetrators.

Jaded Jihadis
The Arab News has a translation of an Arabic-language interview with Abu Qatada, the al Qaeda big arrested in Britain last week. Asked about the Sept. 11 attacks on America, he says that "the benefits far outweigh the viciousness," but adds that there is a downside:

The Sept. 11 attacks were so massive and magnificent. Now Muslims don't want to undertake jihad activities that are of a lesser scale. For example if what occurred in Bali had taken place before Sept. 11, people's interest and joy would have been much greater.

Here's something to dim the joy of anti-American polemicist Robert Fisk, who rushed into print after Bali with a piece blaming the atrocity on Australia's support of the U.S.: Agence France-Presse reports that "Osama bin Laden warned last year that Australia was on al-Qaeda's terrorism hit list because of its role in helping East Timor win independence from Indonesia":

A taped message from bin Laden last November was believed to be a coded signal to extremists in the region to begin preparing retaliatory attacks against Australians for the East Timor operation.

"The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores . . . and they landed on East Timor which is part of the Islamic world," bin Laden said in the video recording, broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC reports that in Algeria, "suspected Islamic extremists have killed 21 people from the same family, including a three-month-old baby." How will Fisk & Co. blame Israel and America for this?

The Moscow Massacre
London's Daily Telegraph "has learned that a number of Arab fighters, believed to be of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni origin, were among the group that seized control of the theatre" in Moscow last week, taking more than 700 hostages. The siege ended Saturday, when, as the Washington Post reports, Russia pumped gas into the theater in an effort to knock out the terrorists. Fifty terrorists were killed, but so were at least 115 hostages.

A Reuters report suggests that the terrorist ringleader, Movsar Barayev, who was killed in the Russian operation, did not adhere all that strictly to his Muslim faith: "A cognac bottle could be seen near Barayev's lifeless hand." But Fisk's Independent doubts it, calling the bottle's presence "probably a stage-managed effect by soldiers to show that he had been drinking." Newsday reports that a Russian TV network "has run footage which it said was from a video made before Arbi Barayev's death and sent to relatives of a hostage. It shows an unshaven Movsar Barayev smiling and twirling a knife, then lowering the blade toward the neck of an unidentified woman."

MSNBC.com reports on how the FSB--successor to the KGB--outsmarted the terrorists using cell phones:

The FSB encouraged families of hostages to make themselves available around the clock at a special coordination center near the theater, where 24-hour support and information for the relatives were also provided.

When calls from hostages came, family members first established whether any terrorists were near the person placing the call. Family members and security officials said the phone would be passed to a security officer, who would ask "yes and no" questions to confirm key information about the terrorists--careful not to draw the hostage into a conversation that would be suspicious to the Chechen fighters.

After the rescue operation ended Saturday, security officials credited cell phones with providing information on the number of terrorists, their weapons arsenal and the location of hundreds of hostages spread throughout the multi-storied theater complex. "The phones were our little secret," one official said, "and through them we knew everything that was going on inside."

Russia's President Vladimir Putin is coming in for criticism over his use of the gas. Many of the hostages are still sick, and the Washington Post notes that "the government's refusal to identify the gas, even to doctors treating the freed hostages, and its decision to keep most of the hostages incommunicado in hospitals provoked new controversy." But in a National Review Online article bearing the unfortunate title "Putin's Gas," James Robbins, defends Russia:

The type of knockout gas used by the Russians is known in the trade as a "calmative," which includes any sedatives or sleep agents, frequently, though not exclusively, deployed in gaseous form. In theory a sleep agent is the ideal instrument for resolving a hostage situation. It can save the lives of both hostages and hostage takers, dramatically reduce the threat to the rescue team, and limit property damage. In this particular case, the Russians were faced with highly motivated terrorists who had stated that they expected to die and who had wired the whole building (as well as themselves) for detonation; a large number of hostages; an enclosed area; and access to the building through air ducts and the basement. The plan was sound--knock out the terrorists with gas as the rescue teams entered the building, dispatch any remaining threats, de-mine the building, and remove the hostages.

The Russian action is more understandable when we consider the barbarity of Moscow's foes. The Middle East Media Research Institute has a translation of a page on an Islamic Chechen Web site, giving the religion of peace's guidelines on killing prisoners:

1) A polytheist prisoner must be killed. No amnesty may be granted to him, nor can he be ransomed.

2) All infidel polytheists and the People of the Book (i.e., Jews and Christians) are to be killed. They may not be granted amnesty, nor can they be ransomed.

3) Amnesty and ransom are the only two ways to deal with prisoners.

4) Amnesty and ransom are possible only after the killing of a large number of prisoners.

5) The Imam, or someone acting on his behalf, can choose between killing, amnesty, ransom or enslaving the prisoner.

For more information on the Moscow massacre, check out Overlawyered.com, which has been all over the story.

You Don't Say--II
"Experts have been disputing how and why the Twin Towers collapsed. A study by a Manhattan engineering firm said damage caused by the planes, and fires that broke out as a result, caused both buildings to crumble during the terrorist attacks."--WINS news radio, New York, Oct. 27

Nazi Ceremony--in Israel?
Here's one of the dumber ideas of all time: The German Embassy in Israel planned "a memorial ceremony next month . . . for Germans killed while serving in the army of the Third Reich, including those in SS units," Ha'aretz reported yesterday:

The memorial ceremony is intended to symbolize "reconciliation," said [Col. Ernest] Elbers [the German military attaché]. One of his innovative contributions to this reconciliation, in speaking to an Israeli audience, is the comment that in his opinion "there is no point in dividing the dead into 'good' dead and 'bad' dead."

Today, however, Ha'aretz reports that the embassy has "postponed" the event because, as an embassy spokesman tells the paper, "we understood that in the present context it leads to a public discourse in Israel that we want to avoid."

Those Peace-Loving Palestinians
"Masked men" from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement "shot dead a woman in Nablus on Friday night after accusing her of collaboration with Israel," the Jerusalem Post reports:

Haifa Sultan, 39, is the third woman to be executed in the West Bank for similar charges in recent months.

Witnesses said Sultan was dragged out of her home in the Nablus casbah Friday night by a group of Fatah gunmen who told passersby and neighbors that she was accused of collaboration with Israel. "She shouted and cried that she was innocent but they shot her in the head and she died instantly," a resident of the casbah told The Jerusalem Post.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Someone please remind us: Why exactly would the world be better off if Arafat's Palestinian Authority had the power of an actual country?

The Reuterville Multiplier
A bunch of idiots got together Saturday in Washington. Or, as the Washington Post puts it, "demonstrators by the hundreds gathered . . . for what organizers pledged would be a loud, angry but nonviolent protest march against President Bush's pre-emptive war policies." Reuters, however, puts the number of protesters in the "tens of thousands." Which goes to prove what we've long suspected: There are a lot of extra zeros hanging around the Reuters newsroom.

A Reuters photograph shows three of the demonstrators dressed as Ku Klux Klansmen. Just as the KKK donned white sheets as the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, these guys are dressing up as, in the words of the cardboard sign one carries, the "ghost of an innocent Iraqi."

Meanwhile, a dozen Americans (or 1,200, according to Reuters?) gathered for an anti-American demonstration in Baghdad, the New York Times reports:

Kathy Kelly, a 49-year-old former Chicago high school English teacher who is a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, spoke out against the Bush administration and in defense of positions taken by Mr. Hussein.

At one point, she said she wished that the United States government would follow Mr. Hussein's example in ordering the emptying of Iraq's prisons, a move the Iraqi leader made last Sunday, in part to counter Mr. Bush's descriptions of him as a murdering tyrant.

"I wish people in our country would be willing to show the same spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation to the two million people in our prisons," she said.

Hey, Kathy, brilliant idea--let's let millions of actual criminals free! Even though this was an anti-American protest, though, the Iraqi media didn't cover it. "The government apparently did not wish to give too much attention to the American demonstrators since that might have sent a signal that street protests are acceptable now, after all."

OK, we've been making fun of the peace movement, and it's an easy target. But these folks deserve respect for standing up for an unpopular position. So let's have three cheers for the following signers of the "Not in Our Name" pro-Saddam petition:

• Honor Back, "Prostitute"
• Ihava Dee Badvartz, "Independant thinker"
• Harry Buttock, "Anti-gravity League"
• Mouva Tu Cañada, "President and CEO, Sudentenland Revisited"
• Jimmy Carter, "Girlyman"
• Alvin Chipmunk, "Toon Animation"
• Lou Cipher, "Leader of the Iraqi Nation"
• Ramsey Clark, "Former US Attorney General, Current Unemployable Lunatic"
• I.M. Cornholio, "Postmodern Vegan Poetry Therapy Activist / bag boy at Whole Foods"
• Peace Atany Cost, "Liberal activist with little concept of international relations nor economics"
• George Costanza, "assistant traveling secretary for the New York Yankees"
• Roe Dann, "Monster Island Reclamation Society"
• VoteRepublican DefeatAnti-Americanism
• I.M. Depraved
• Lee DerHosen, "Munich, Germany"
• Rama Lama Dingdong, "Islamic Street Corner Doo Wop Vocalist"
• Idiot Drooling, "Lawyer at Large"
• Donald D. Duca
• Dümscheiss De Linquent, "Director, Society for the Advancement of Integrity in Using Our Name"
• Who Flung Dung, "pitcher"
• Tarquin Fintinwimbimbimbimbusstop Fitang-fitangolay-bisquitbarrel, "The Very Silly Party"

And remember, when you're standing up for peace, don't lose your head. That's a lesson a pair of California activists learned the hard way: "Two demonstrators heading to Saturday's anti-war march in San Francisco were critically injured when their heads, sticking through the roof of a former school bus, hit the top of the Broadway Tunnel," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

'Perhaps the Strongest Objections'
Last month we noted a dilemma for the politically correct: Muslims were objecting to the Terrence McNally play "Corpus Christi," which depicts Jesus Christ as a homosexual. How are multicultural folks supposed to react to this, since homosexuals and Muslims are both oppressed classes? Well, here's the Minneapolis Star Tribune's answer, in a story by Graydon Royce:

In London, a Muslim group called "The Defenders of the Messenger Jesus" issued a fatwa--or death sentence--on McNally. Indiana legislators sued unsuccessfully to stop a production at a state college. Religious groups routinely have staged boycotts.

Perhaps the strongest objections have come from the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights issued a statement in conjunction with the Indiana case, charging that McNally wrote the play as an attack on Christianity--purposefully to offend.

Of course! Why didn't we think of that? All you have to do is say that criticism from the Catholic League is a "stronger objection" than a death sentence from a Muslim group. And after all, those Muslims are always sentencing people to death anyway, so it's really not that big a deal.

A Religion of Peace
"A Malaysian Islamic leader said Muslim men who marry more than one wife to satisfy their lust should be whipped until they are impotent if they neglect their families," the Associated Press reports.

You Don't Say--III
"Sniper Suspects Face Murder Charges"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 26

Farrakhan Gets Tough
Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, has acknowledged that sniper suspect John Muhammad was a member of his anti-Semitic, quasi-Mohammedan cult. "But Farrakhan said the man would be ousted from the Chicago-based group if he is convicted in the series of shootings that left 10 people dead and three wounded." That would be a shame, because, as the New York Times reports, "by many accounts, religion had always been a stabilizing factor in the life of John Allen Muhammad"--and we'd hate to think what an unstable John Muhammad might do.

CNN has obtained a copy of the letter the sniper left at the scene of the Oct. 19 shooting in Ashland, Va. You can judge for yourself, but to us the letter seems semiliterate. However, the Washington Post quotes one Carole E. Cheski, "a linguist in Georgetown, Del., who researches syntactic variations and has testified in state and federal criminal cases":

[She] said she was struck most by the relative sophistication of the language. 'These are not illiterate ramblings," she said, pointing to the letter's use of Roman numerals, gerunds, complex sentences, hyphenations at syllable breaks and parentheses and quotation marks.

Wow, we've used all of those devices at one time or another, so we must be really smart.

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around
"John Allen Muhammad, the U.S. Army veteran charged with murder in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper slayings, was detained for hours at Miami International Airport in April 2001 because immigration inspectors suspected he was trying to smuggle two undocumented Jamaican women into the country," the Miami Herald reports.

The Bellingham (Wash.) Herald notes that Muhammad raised suspicions at the Lighthouse Mission, an Evergreen State homeless shelter, because of his jet-setting lifestyle:

At the mission, [shelter director the Rev. Al] Archer said, Muhammad would stay for a few days and then leave, saying he was traveling to Denver and New Orleans, among other places. The odd part was that Muhammad was traveling by airplane. Archer learned that when an airline ticket agent called the mission asking for Muhammad.

"At the mission, not many airline agents call and ask for residents," Archer said.

The Seattle Times may have an explanation, saying that "a picture is emerging" of Muhammad as a "suspected human smuggler":

In April 2001, Muhammad, formerly of Tacoma, was detained by immigration inspectors at the Miami International Airport. They suspected him of trying to smuggle two undocumented Jamaican women into the country, a U.S. government official said yesterday.

And a month earlier, on March 11, 2001, Muhammad was stopped in the airport in St. John's, Antigua, holding a Washington driver's license using the name of Russel Dwight and listing a nonexistent Tacoma address. He was trying to board a plane to Los Angeles via Miami.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is defending its decision to let Muhammad's underage sidekick, Lee Malvo, stay in the country. The Denver Post reports that although the Border Patrol agent who arrested Malvo and his mother listed them as stowaways, a "Justice Department official said they were not stowaways under U.S. law" and thus could be released.

No Pun Intended
The Associated Press reports that Muhammad purchased the car he allegedly used in his sniping spree for $250 at a Trenton, N.J., used-car dealership called Sure Shot Auto Sales Inc.

Nanny Lawsuits
"Familes [sic] who hire nannies, cleaners and gardeners in their own homes face being sued for racial discrimination under a major shake-up of race relations laws," Britain's Guardian reports. But if you hire a nanny of the wrong race, you might be excused if you're of the right race: "The only exemption would be if they can show a 'genuine occupational requirement' to hire someone of a particular racial group--such as an elderly Muslim woman who wanted a home help who was also a Muslim."

You Don't Say--IV
"Raymond Lueck, a psychologist with Family Care Psychological Services in Milwaukee, said sometimes road rages spills out on innocent victims. . . . Someone who would become angry enough about a car accident to shoot someone most likely would be experiencing 'a lot of hostility and anger,' Lueck said."--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oct. 25

Dog Shoots Man
When a dog bites a man, it isn't news. When a man bites a dog--well, even that's old news. But now a dog has shot a man. Minnesota hunter Michael Murray was setting up a photo of the seven birds his hunting party had shot when his dog, Sonny, stepped on a loaded 12-gauge shotgun and it went off. "At first I didn't know what happened," Murray tells the Associated press. "I got that blinding flash of pain and I sat down. Blood was pumping out of my ankle." Murray adds: "Sonny just laid by my side. He knew something was bad."

Adds the AP: "Murray admits there is a certain amount of notoriety that goes along with getting shot by your dog. 'That's the hard part, talking to people, because you feel like such a fool,' he said."

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Will the Moscow massacre change Russia's attitude toward terrorism?
• Robert Bartley: The governor's race gives New York voters three evils to pick from.
• Brendan Miniter: Rep. Maurice Hinchey has a safe Democratic seat--but he shouldn't.