by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 3:41 P.M. EST

Today's Video on WSJ.com: James Taranto looks ahead to the 2008 presidential campaign.

An Apology
Our hard drive went kaput early yesterday afternoon, just after we moved some 100 reader emails from the server onto a local file. The Dow Jones technical staff was unable to recover anything from the drive, which means that these emails--received between approximately 1 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. yesterday--are lost forever. If you sent us a story that we use today and you don't get credit, please accept our apologies.

'Different Faces of the Same Totalitarian Threat'
It was five years ago that President Bush identified "an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world" by seeking weapons of mass destruction that they could provide to terrorists. Bush mentioned three members of this axis: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The Iraqi regime is no more, but Iraq remains the site of conflict between the U.S. and what the president, in last night's State of the Union, called the "Islamist radical movement":

Listen to this warning from the late terrorist Zarqawi: "We will sacrifice our blood and bodies to put an end to your dreams, and what is coming is even worse." Osama bin Laden declared: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah--a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. Whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East, and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.

Interestingly, Bush made no direct reference to North Korea (only saying the administration is "pursuing intensive diplomacy to achieve a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons"), even though the Pyongyang regime conducted a nuclear test of sorts last year and, according to London's Daily Telegraph, it "is helping Iran to prepare an underground nuclear test" similar to its own.

Virginia's Sen. Jim Webb, who delivered the Democratic response, had a different take on Korea:

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.

Actually, it's not quite accurate to say Ike brought the Korean war to an end. The Koreas signed an armistice but never a peace treaty, and thus remain technically at war, with some 30,000 U.S. troops still in South Korea to protect against the North--though the current stalemate, for the moment at least, is bloody only for the people of North Korea. The inconclusive outcome of the Korean War can easily be interpreted as a warning of the dangers of leaving threats for future generations to deal with.

And Loven It!
Remember Jennifer Loven? She's the Associated Press "reporter" who gets to write liberal opinion pieces and call them news. (See here and here for earlier examples.) Loven's latest is on the State of the Union:

New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

In the president's State of the Union speech last year, delivered just five months after the disaster, the devastation merited only 156 words out of more than 5,400.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke for almost exactly as long before a joint session of Congress. But Katrina received not a single mention.

One could easily say the same thing about many other topics, so why does Loven pick Katrina? Plainly because she thinks it is something the president should have discussed--which is to say, this is no more than an opinion piece.

But He Supports the Troops!
Sgt. Jason Hess, who is stationed in Iraq with the U.S. Army's First Cavalry Division, wanted to buy some floor mats for his men to sleep on. He wrote to a West Allis, Wis., company called Discount-Mats.com:

Do you ship to APO [Army Post Office] addresses? I'm in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for who ships to APO first.

As Snopes.com notes, because of paperwork and other regulations, some companies do not ship to APO addresses. Discount-Mats turned out to be such a company, but the response to Sgt. Hess, from an anonymous employee, included a bit of editorializing:

We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

The story spread, and Discount-Mats heard from "furious people," who "e-mailed and called the Web site owner's house and left obscene messages," Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV reports. The company fired the employee responsible.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that "anti-war and free speech advocates were equally offended, by the widespread criticism of the company and the individual who responded to the soldier":

"This is a matter of free speech," said Julie Enslow, an organizer with Peace Action Wisconsin in Milwaukee. "It is totally irresponsible for radio stations and bloggers to attack a person for his personal political views."

You've got to love Julie Enslow's concept of free speech. If you agree with her, it's fine to shoot off your mouth on company time. If you disagree with her, it's "totally irresponsible" to express your views in a public forum.

At the Movies
The Oscar nominations are out, and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" picked up two of them, one for Best Documentary and one for Best Original Song, reports the Tennessean. The paper adds that the erstwhile veep "presented his now-famous global warming slideshow to a group of 10,000 in Boise, Idaho, Monday night."

Temperature in Boise Monday? A balmy 29 degrees. He's still got it!

Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Almaty that "Kazakh border guards arrested a man trying to smuggle 500 parrots in his car from neighbouring Uzbekistan." Sounds like they're making a sequel to another Oscar nominee.

So Much for Global Warming
"Sun Returns to Black After Years in Red"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 23

Witness for the Prosecution
The New York Times lifts the curtain on the trial of Scooter Libby:

In the trial's opening day, [prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald's task was to keep the issue before the jury simple: were Mr. Libby's statements about his conversations with reporters true? To that end, he spoke for only about an hour in outlining his case.

The mission of [defense lawyer Theodore] Wells, in contrast, was to present the case as hopelessly complicated, thus leaving the jurors in doubt about the validity of the charges. Mr. Wells spoke for nearly two and a half hours, ranging over issues of the reliability of memory; Mr. Libby's duties, which during the relevant period included crises in Liberia and Turkey; and threats from Al Qaeda on the days that Mr. Libby spoke to reporters.

Doesn't it sound as though the Times is taking sides here? In this telling Fitzgerald is presenting a legal theory, whereas Wells is trying to throw sand in the jurors' eyes.

Anyway, if the case is so simple, why can't The New Yorker, with its army of fact-checkers, get it right? Here's Nick Lemann, dean of Columbia's journalism school, in this week's issue:

In that spirit, the White House dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, in February of 2002, to find proof that the country had shipped yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Wilson not only came up empty-handed; he said so publicly, in a Times Op-Ed piece that he published five months later. The Administration then went on another search for evidence--the kind that could be used to discredit Wilson--and began disseminating it, off the record, to a few trusted reporters. That led to the unlawful exposure of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a C.I.A. agent.

As John Podhoretz notes, Lemann makes at least three factual errors:

• He misstates who sent Wilson on the Niger junket (it was the CIA, not the White House).
  
  
• He gets the date of Wilson's op-ed wrong (it was July 2003, which was 17 and not five months after the Niger trip).
  
  
• He falsely claims that Plame's "exposure" was "unlawful." In fact, no one has been charged with a crime, and no one has offered any evidence to back up Wilson's claim that Plame was covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

To which we could add one more: The first person to expose Plame's identity seems to have been Richard Armitage, then the State Department's No. 2, and no one has suggested that he was part of an administration effort against Wilson.

Go to Hell, por Favor

"Chavez, the 'Polite' Socialist"--headline, WashingtonPost.com, Jan. 19

"Chavez to United States: 'Go to Hell!' "--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 21

Sister Cities?

"Beaverton City Council Approves Toy Gun Restrictions"--headline, KATU-TV Web site (Portland, Ore.), Jan. 23

"Tijuana Police Issued Slingshots"--headline, MSNBC.com, Jan. 23

What Would We Do Without Polls?
"Polls Say Wealth Is Important to Youth"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 22

Oh, but the Paisley Looks Fabulous!
"Event Opposed for Its Gay Ties"--headline, Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.), Jan. 24

At Least He Wasn't Wearing a Gay Tie
"Jackson Ex-Lawyer Testifies in Tape Suit"--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 24

'They Were Delicious, Just Like Bubbeh Used to Make'
"Kosher Slaughterhouse Recalls Hot Dogs"--headline, New York Sun, Jan. 24

'She's a Saint'
"Earnhardt Jr. Defends Stepmother Teresa"--headline, WRAL-TV Web site, Jan. 23

Bauer Gets Busted
"24 Held After Immigration Raid"--headline, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 23

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Train Misses Motorcyclist"--headline, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, Jan. 22
  
  
• "Oldest Aardvark in Captivity Dies in Tacoma"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 24
  
  
• "Royal's Gaffe Upsets Canada"--headline, Australian, Jan. 25
  
  
• "Bush Speech Leaves Press Unmoved"--headline, BBC Web site, Jan. 24

He Has the Hat
John Kerry* will be running in 2008--for a fifth U.S. Senate term. As for the presidency, he has decided not to throw his hat into the ring, the Associated Press reports:

Kerry plans to disclose his political plans in remarks on the Senate floor later in the day, according to this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement.

Good thing he didn't pre-empt the formal announcement!

* "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force--if necessary--to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."

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