Hilary Bok is rather bent out of shape at a Washington Whispers poll which asks “If you had a choice of four daycare centers run separately by Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, which would you choose for your kids?”

She suggests some alternative poll questions:

If you needed some yard work done, would you hire Mel Martinez, Henry Cisneros, Xavier Becerra, or Bill Richardson?

If you needed a rap DJ for a party, would you hire Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, or Michael Steele?

If you needed an interior decorator, would you choose Jim McGreevey, Barney Frank, Larry Craig, or the disinterred corpse of Harvey Milk?

She believes that “they would probably recognize any of these other appeals to stereotypes as offensive. And yet, oddly enough, asking which one of four prominent women we’d like to have running our children’s day care center is A-OK. ”

Are these really comparable?  None of the men listed have any association aside from ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation with said stereotypes.  Conversely, all four women are, in fact, mothers.

Is it any worse than asking whether you’d rather have a beer with George W. Bush or John Kerry?  Heck, Bush doesn’t even drink! Ditto, “Who would you rather be in a foxhole with” questions.

Further, as it turns out, we do in fact ask “Who would you rather have watch your kids for a couple of hours on a Saturday?” and “Who would you rather have as your dad?” about male presidential contenders.

Beyond that, leaving aside that this was just a fun poll rather than a deep psychological exercise, it is simply true that women are generally the primary caregivers to their children and that we judge women with children on that basis more than we do men.   And while some of that is a function of culturally imposed norms, it’s not entirely a social construct but rather hard-wired into human biology.

My wife’s an educated, successful career woman.  She’s the Chief Operating Officer of a major polling firm.  My jobs give me more flexibility than hers, in that I can often work from home and time shift and she can’t.

We do not have equal roles in raising our daughter.

I’m an active father and try to do my fair share of diaper changes, burping, bouncing, and so forth.  I was there for the ultrasounds, labor, C-section, and have made all the pediatrician visits so far.  But, for example, because of my biological limitations, my wife did one hundred percent of the gestating.  She also endured the lion’s share of the pain associated with labor and delivery.  She’s still recovering from the C-section.  She plays a role in every feeding, whether by actively nursing or having pumped milk that I later bottle feed.   She got two months’ paid maternity leave, whereas I went back to work immediately.  (It helped that Katie was born on New Year’s Eve and our office was closed until January 5th).

My wife will go back to work soon and the division of labor will shift somewhat to a more balanced role.  In a few months, once Katie starts eating solid foods, things will balance even further.  But the reality will almost certainly be that she’ll cry out for mommy more than for daddy for years to come.

Getting back to the poll, then, it strikes me as an interesting way to get at public attitudes about these women.

Two of the women, Clinton and Obama, played second fiddle to their husbands’ careers during their children’s formative years while the other two, Pelosi and Palin, are the public faces of their marriages (although Pelosi’s husband is a multi-millionaire investor, he’s a virtual unknown; nobody outside Alaska and perhaps the “snow machine” racing community had ever heard of Todd Palin until his wife got tapped to be John McCain’s running mate).

They’ve all been pretty good moms, it would seem.  The Pelosis raised five children to adulthood, largely keeping them out of the national spotlight.  So far as I’m aware, they’re all productive members of society. The Clintons raised one daughter to adulthood entirely in the spotlight.  They managed to mostly shield her from the worst of it and she’s doing well for herself.  The Obama girls are living their formative years in the White House.  By all accounts, they’re doing well. The Palins, too, have five kids including, famously, one with Down Syndrome.   Their oldest is serving as an infantryman in Iraq while their middle daughter has had some well publicized issues.

If I had to send Katie to day care with one of them, I’d pick Obama, who’s warmer than Clinton and Pelosi (at least in public persona) and brainier than Palin.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has finally resigned.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is resigning following intense pressure to step down because of a prostitution scandal. Spitzer says his resignation is effective Monday.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has decided to resign, completing a stunning fall from power after he was nationally disgraced by links to a high-priced prostitution ring, a top state official said Wednesday. Spitzer was scheduled to announce his resignation midday, according to a second top Spitzer staffer. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

The New York Times adds,

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, reeling from revelations that he had been a client of a prostitution ring, announced his resignation today at his headquarters in Manhattan.

Mr. Spitzer’s resignation is to be effective Monday, and Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson is to be sworn in to replace him.

In the two days since news of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement in the prostitution ring surfaced, he has been engaged in an intense legal and family debate about whether to resign or, as aides said his wife was urging, to stay on. Mr. Spitzer, who had been holed up at his apartment at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street in Manhattan since issuing an apology on Tuesday, emerged at about 11:15 a.m. Wednesday with his wife by his side and got into a black S.U.V., which headed for his headquarters on Third Avenue as news helicopters followed above.

On Tuesday, as Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, contemplated his next move, the New York political world remained in a suspended state, with cries — even from fellow Democrats — growing louder for him to step down.

In one of the last and desperate rounds of the end game, a top Spitzer administration official reached out to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s staff on Tuesday to see if the governor could avoid an impeachment vote. But the prospects were grim.

Republicans have pledged to try to have Mr. Spitzer impeached and only 34 of the more than 100 Democrats in the Assembly would be needed for the matter to be referred to the Senate for an impeachment trial. It was clear during the discussions that 34 or more Democrats were almost certain to vote against the governor. That outcome would have been a dire for the governor, because his top political rival, Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno, leads the Senate, where a trial would have been held. “An impeachment proceeding would force Democrats to either abandon him or defend him,” said one leading Democrat. “They would abandon him.”

It’s telling that his wife was pushing for him to hold on despite misconduct that harmed her much more than the public. AP has two different stories on that topic.

NY first lady’s charmed life slips away

Silda Wall Spitzer appeared to have it all. The Harvard Law School graduate succeeded as a hard-charging corporate lawyer, then raised three daughters and supported the ambitions of her husband, Eliot, as he became New York’s attorney general and then governor. On Monday, she stood wordlessly by his side as he admitted to acting “in a way that violates my obligations to my family.”

[...]

Silda Spitzer, 50, grew up in Concord, N.C., where her father was a hospital administrator. She attended Meredith College, a women’s college in Raleigh, N.C., and went from there to Harvard Law School, where she met Spitzer, and to a career in mergers and acquisitions. While at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a prestigious New York law firm, she billed as many as 3,300 hours a year — more than nine hours a day, including weekends.

[...]

“I felt very conflicted and emotional about leaving my job,” she told an interviewer from Vogue magazine last year. “It was not something I wanted to do, but I have never once doubted that it was the right decision for us. You don’t want to give up your dreams, but you also have to confront the reality of your life. Ultimately, it was more important for me to have my family work.”

Women ponder why Spitzer’s wife stood by

When Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband in ashen-faced misery the other day as the governor made his brief apology in the prostitution scandal, she uttered not a word. Yet she launched a thousand conversations.

“Why is she standing there?” many women wondered. “Should she be? Would I be?” And for many, who’ve seen a long line of wronged political spouses do the same, from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Dina Matos McGreevey to Suzanne Craig, the immediate answer was a resounding, “Hell, no.” “I watched her and I thought, ‘Again, the wife is standing there,’” said Jessica Thorpe, a 38-year-old mother of three in Larchmont, N.Y. “And I had a visceral reaction. I just don’t get it. Why does it always have to be that way in politics? What will she get out of standing there?”

[...]

Yet many women also understood that Silda Spitzer was obviously in pain, and in the unforgiving glare of the public spotlight. So while Donna Webster, a product development executive in Boston, wished the New York governor had been forced to face the music alone, she also empathized with his wife’s choice, which she assumed was for the sake of her three daughters. “I’ve been thinking about this constantly. I cringed when I saw her next to him,” said Webster, 59. “I think he should have taken it like a man — without her.” But, she added, “She was in crisis mode. She was like a mother bear protecting her cubs. When crisis hits, you do what you think you need to for your family. Later, you can step back and think about protecting yourself.”

Amid the din, one of the most poignant voices defending Silda Spitzer was Matos McGreevey, who stood next to her husband, New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, in 2004 as he told the world he was gay, claimed he had an affair with a male aide and resigned. “I’m reliving that moment and what it was like standing there next to Jim,” Matos McGreevey told The Associated Press Monday night. “I wanted to embrace her and say, `Be strong, you’ll survive this.’”

In another interview on CNN, she referred to others who’d also stood by their spouses at moments of deep humiliation — Clinton, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Suzanne Craig, the wife of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who was accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom. “We all do it for personal reasons,” said Matos McGreevey, now going through a contentious divorce with the former governor. “I did it because he was my husband. I had always supported him. I loved him. I had a daughter … I wanted her to know I was there for her father.”

[...]

Joanna Coles, editor in chief of the women’s magazine Marie Claire, feels that at least for the moment, Silda Spitzer had no choice but to stand publicly by her husband, for whom she gave up an active career as a corporate lawyer. “People are very quick to judge her, but that’s the deal that you make when one of you decides to give up your career so that the other can go all out for his,” said Coles. “I think it would have been odd if she wasn’t there. It’s the pact that they made. She chose to be the wife of a governor, and she’s done it very conscientiously, and very well.”

It’s a very surreal situation she finds herself in, through no fault of her own. This isn’t a Hillary Clinton situation, where she stood by a serial adulterer; so far as we know, Spitzer had been a model husband before this.

Columbus, Ohio police are using hot, topless women to seduce men into exposing themselves in public so that they can arrest them.

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree. He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison’s penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.

Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor, based on video footage taken by cops who were targeting men having sex or masturbating in the park. While topless sunbathing is legal in the city’s parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

The case is just one of the more extreme examples of police stings aimed at luring people into committing crimes, a tactic that has resulted in hundreds of arrests, many convictions and plenty of controversy. Law enforcement officials say that such sting operations are an extremely effective means of lowering crime rates and stopping the criminally minded before they commit worse offenses. [...] But such operations veer dangerously close to entrapment, say lawyers, civil libertarians and defendants who’ve been caught in sting operations.

Patterico guest poster DRJ presents a lawyerly explanation for why this isn’t technically “entrapment.” Further, he “like[s] the policy of stopping small crime before it becomes big crime.”

Ed Morrissey argues, though, that this pretty clearly crosses a line.

Rounding up perverts who masturbate in public places is a good use of police resources and allows people to use community assets as intended. Having topless women laying out in the open and caressing men who act on understandable signals of sexual openness turns these places into precisely what they’re hoping to avoid.

Quite right.

Where’s the evidence that Garrison, absent very active enticement by a hot, topless undercover cop, was likely to commit any crime whatsoever?

It’s one thing to have a female officer pose as a prostitute on a corner where solicitation is known to occur and wait for prospective “clients” to proposition them. Or for a plain clothes detective to pose as a drug buyer to gain evidence against a known drug dealer. Or, heck, to have cops sit in known gay solicitation hangouts, tapping their feet in case Larry Craig drops by.

In this case, though, we likely merely caught a lonely guy who exhibited poor judgment when given an opportunity that I suspect he didn’t get very often. Why are we using police resources for this?

UPDATE: According to the Columbus Dispatch‘s account of the story (via an update to and comments in DRJ’s piece, linked above) the woman was not a police officer, making entrapment a harder sell. At the same time, however, she was apparently attracting — and happily encouraging — quite a bit of lewd attention:

Detective Dick Elias said vice officers had set up the video because they were targeting men who were having sex or masturbating in the park — not men who had come to see her.

The woman had been sunbathing topless near the front of the park for days, he said, and “had become a spectacle” with men driving by to watch.

It is legal for women to be topless in Columbus.

So Elias asked the woman to move to the rear of the park, which she did. But men still drove by to see her. Another man, whose name wasn’t mentioned, was charged the same afternoon as Garrison for exposing himself to the woman.

Essentially, this was the equivalent of a speed trap: A situation existed where lawbreaking was quite likely and the police were there hoping to make arrests.

While I’m sympathetic to the community’s interest in not having parks become havens for lewd activity, I’m still dubious of this particular use of police resources. Indeed, it would seem that the city of Columbus would be far better off not encouraging women to sit around the park half naked.

Frank Rich notes that established candidates in both parties are struggling against comparative upstarts.

We can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain’s head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can’t be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

“I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy,” Mr. Huckabee joked to Don Imus, “but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.” So much for the gravitas points earned during a five-and-a-half year stay at the Hanoi Hilton.

As it happens, I asked McCain this very question on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, albeit somewhat more colorfully phrased. McCain laughed appreciatively and gave his standard answer: “Life isn’t fair.”

His serious answer, though, was actually quite elegant. We’ve had a good number of debates and opportunities for the candidates to shine and Huckabee has shined on those appearances. He comes across as a decent, personable guy and people like him. He’s answering tough questions in a way that gives a lot of people confidence.

That, I think, is better than Rich’s conclusion. Noting that Bill Clinton is working hard to hammer home Barack Obama’s relative inexperience without success, Rich believes a lack of experience may be seen as a virtue in today’s “youth-obsessed culture.”

For this, of course, Rich blames Bush.

The rabid hunger for change, it turns out, has made the very idea of experience as toxic as every other attribute of the Bush White House. The once-heralded notion of a C.E.O. presidency, overstocked with “tested” Washington and Fortune 500 executives like Cheney and Rumsfeld, is now in the toilet with Larry Craig. You couldn’t push the pendulum further in the other direction than by supporting a candidate like Mr. Huckabee, who is blatantly unprepared to be president and whose most impressive battle has been with his weight. In a Rasmussen poll in Florida, Mr. Huckabee even did well among foreign-policy-minded Republicans whose most important issue is Iraq.

The irony here, of course, is that Bush himself was quite inexperienced by presidential standards. Yes, he surrounded himself with a hyper-experienced staff. But perhaps having little choice but to defer to their wisdom is problematic?

Rich ends his column on a more insightful note: Experience provides the opportunity to make mistakes. Too many of those on one’s résumé isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially if they’re recent and one hasn’t demonstrated having learned from them.

Ultimately, I don’t believe either Huckabee or Obama will get their parties’ nominations and a lack of experience, especially on the foreign policy front, will be a large part of the reason. But that’s going to require the more established candidates to do more than simply proclaim their experience; they must show what they’ve learned and why that’s going to be important in leading the country.

McCain’s time as prisoner of war three and a half decades ago doesn’t qualify him to be president. Plenty of men endured that hell and few of them have the qualities necessary to be commander-in-chief. The leadership he showed during his struggles, though, and the way in which they shaped his life, should be a huge advantage if he can express how they’ve prepared him to lead the country.

The Fly My Pretties Fly Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AP Photo/U.S. Army, Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Mcdaniel)

I really don’t like the practice of declaring everyone a winner or of not having some sort of closure to a contest, but this one is the closest one I’ve seen at OTB where nearly everyone deserves some mention. This set of captions were all Hilarious. That being said I still brutally cut down field to the winners and the honorable mentions. There’s a tie for First Place which hasn’t happened for a while.

The Winners:

First(tie): markm – In another first, former President George H.W. Bush on a tandem jump receives a mid-air refueling.

First(tie): Dan Schuler – Pull over. I’m citing you for following too closely.

Second: Dennis – Seconds later, The Senior Bush’s Cheeks deployed and he landed safely.

Third: Wyatt Earp – “Read my lips: brr, brr, brr, brr, brr,”

Honorable Mention:

Bithead – Skydivers go down faster

Bithead – Skydivers: Good to the last drop

Dantheman – Flap harder, Icarus!

elliot – So, Mr Craig. I don’t mind teaching you lessons, but this is not what I had in mind.

Rachel Edith – Bush 41 – “I’m gonna find those WMDs.”

G. A. Phillips – I pull your ripcord if you pull mine first…..

John425 – The two man Iranian National Bob Sled Team in practice over Teheran.

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

“No Mr. President, I’m not a real parachute instructor, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night… with Larry Craig.”

Pretty Fly for a white guy.

“Pull it… pull it… OUCH!! No, Pull the ripcord!”

“They’re testing what missile defense today?”

The Thursday Contest knows where it’ll be when its laxative kicks in.

The I Feel Pretty Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

The Winners:

First: MikeMmarkm – Why so glum, Ringo? You finally outrank Sgt. Pepper.

Second: Kenny – “You look like a very hairy Jake Gyllenhaal to me.” (not that there’s anything wrong with that)

Third: walt – Ahmadinejad: “Whenever I see man in uniform, it’s like this – BOINGGG”.

Honorable Mention:

Stormy Dragon – Ahmadinejad comes in second at the Tehran Ringo Starr Look-a-like Contest after losing to this Sgt. Pepper era entrant.

Bithead – Iran announces their new weapon: The yellow submarine.

V the K – “Oh, and look at what that man is doing to the other man’s rectum with a pineapple. Oh, Allah, I love the Folsom Street Fair!”

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

“My finger smell like Camel pootie to you?”

“That Larry Craig is a real music lover, his foot just kept tappin’ away.”

“What I meant to say is there are no ‘grays’ in Tehran, You’re up next for the firing squad general.”

The Monday Contest is just starting to horse around.

After swearing to a judge that he was guilty of criminal action and then swearing to his constituents that he would resign if another judge didn’t allow him to take back his word to the first judge, Larry Craig has now gone back on his word. Here’s his official statement (not that it means much):

I am extremely disappointed with the ruling issued today. I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options.

Unless he’s an idiot in addition to being a liar and a pervert, he simply had to know that this ruling was a foregone conclusion. Judges simply don’t allow people to take back guilty pleas absent rather extraordinary circumstances.

I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that. As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively.

By all accounts, his colleagues consider him a joke.

Over the course of my three terms in the Senate and five terms in the House, I have accumulated seniority and important committee assignments that are valuable to Idaho, not the least of which are my seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. A replacement would be highly unlikely to obtain these posts.

That’s certainly true. Then again, that was true when he made his pledge to resign.

In addition, I will continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee – something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate.

There’s still that matter of pleading guilty in a court of law.

When my term has expired, I will retire and not seek reelection. I hope this provides the certainty Idaho needs and deserves.

Why would his word provide any certainty? It’s of no value whatsoever.

The Donkey Hokey Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AFP/Jewel Samad)

The Winners:

First: floyd – no No NO!!…IT’S TAIL! You pin the TAIL on the donkey!

Second: John Burgess – George Soros (in helmet) injects a little ‘Go Juice’ into the Democratic race for the Presidential Nomination.

Third: Wyatt Earp – Lady Godiva has really let herself go

Honorable Mention:

Rachel Edith – Rudy becomes a horse of a different color as he prepares to speak to the next group.

John425 – Keith Olbermann goes undercover as horse’s ass to get the real “thrust” of things.

Roger – “I wish I knew how to quit you!”

The Best Triumph Impression Award

G.A. Phillips – Another liberal being tackled and arrested at a protest for acting like a jackass.

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

‘Nation Velour’ was not nearly as popular as ‘National Velvet.’

DRUDGEBREAKING: Larry craig incognito caught sneaking into Enumclaw Zoo farm. Developing…

Cheney: “Why do I always have to be the ass end.”

Brokeback Mounting

The Monday Contest is trying to cut things off short.

Now here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “Sen. Craig’s fall may benefit salmon.”

So, how exactly will fish benefit from a change in the Senate? Presumably, salmon were already able to use the bathroom in peace and having a “wide stance” is not much of a problem in the deep blue sea.

It turns out to have nothing to do with Craig’s infamous recreational activities.

The surprising fall of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, removes a longtime obstacle to efforts by Democrats and environmentalists to promote salmon recovery on Northwest rivers.

Craig, who was removed from leadership posts on the Senate Appropriations and Energy committees after a sex scandal, is known as one the most powerful voices in Congress on behalf of the timber and power industries. Environmentalists have fought him for years on issues from endangered salmon to public land grazing.

Now Senate Democrats, exercising their slim majority, have waded into two contentious issues — both related to Snake River salmon. First, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asked federal regulators to require passage for salmon and steelhead for relicensing of the Hells Canyon Complex, a series of dams on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho. Reid says the passage would allow salmon to return to their historical spawning grounds in northern Nevada, where the shimmering fish used to run thick nearly a century ago.

Meanwhile, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has asked her colleagues to undo Craig’s bid to use a federal spending bill to dictate water flow for Snake River fish.

There’s probably an Evel Knievel joke in there somewhere.

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has come out of the closet: She’s heterosexual.

During an interview with The Advocate to be published next week, Sean Kennedy, the gay magazine’s news and features editor, asked the presidential candidate, “How do you respond to the occasional rumor that you’re a lesbian?”

“People say a lot of things about me, so I really don’t pay any attention to it,” Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) replied. “It’s not true, but it is something that I have no control over. People will say what they want to say.”

For what it’s worth, I guess. I’ve always presumed she was straight but her denial doesn’t provide any meaningful additional evidence. As Larry Craig and others have shown, it’s possible for a high profile public figure to be gay, pretend to be straight, and even to deny being gay despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Countdown to condemnation from gay activist groups for not loudly proclaiming that she’d be proud to be gay 5, 4, 3 . . .

Slightly reworded for clarity.

John Cole points to former President Bill Clinton’s remarks on Larry King last evening about the war in Iraq. He draws especial attention to this:

But in a way, the fact that we have now succeeded with this strategy also shows its limits, because we don’t have the troops to do this all over the country.

And it shows you that ultimately this is a political problem that has to be solved by the Iraqis themselves. Furthermore, I don’t see any alternative consistent with the responsibilities for national security to a substantial withdrawal of troops this year, because the military is so overstressed.

If we had a big national security emergency now, we would be virtually compelled to meet it with Naval and Air Force forces, because the Army, the Marine Corps, the National Guard, the Reserves are all overstretched, all deeply stressed. There are Naval personnel now, substantial numbers of them who have been trained in weapons fire, infantry tactics, even guerrilla warfare, trained, in effect, to be a second army because we are so overstressed.

This passage shows Clinton’s skill at the art of rhetoric. It is, however, grossly misleading. Yes, the military is stressed by the high opstempo — as it was during the 1990s when Clinton was sending them to parts unknown on missions having little if anything to do with U.S. national security. Yes, the Navy is training some people in infantry tactics. No, they’re not related.

Then-Chief of Naval Operations Vern Clark directed the creation of a “brown water” force to increase the Navy’s role in counter-terrorism two years ago (”Implementation of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Guidance—Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Capabilities.” Director Navy Staff Memorandum of July 6, 2005).

This was almost entirely a bureaucratic ploy to increase Navy funding in an era where expenditures for non-GWOT functions were a hard sell. The Defense Department was in the midst of Don Rumsfeld’s transformation effort and the recent Quadrennial Defense Review was focused on a Department that was ready to fight the terrorists. Clark’s order took heed of this environment.

See, for example, a Navy League report from June 2005:

Pentagon experts and defense analysts expect the capital-intensive Navy and Air Force to see their programs pared back — as they did in a $30 billion round of budget cuts over the next six years that were handed out in December — and redirected toward the Army, Marine Corps and Special Operations Forces. A classified analysis in April by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff, for example, suggested the Navy’s planned aircraft carrier fleet of 11 ships be reduced to 10 and the savings used to pay for new capabilities.

Where the services were vocal about their particular agendas and out to protect select capabilities in previous QDRs, Rumsfeld is running the show this time and parochial schemes have largely been subsumed.

Meanwhile, the Navy has drafted a new strategy of its own: “Navy’s 3/1 Strategy: The Maritime Contribution to the Joint Force in a Changed Strategic Landscape.” This narrative captures ideas that senior service officials have expressed since January when Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, declared the Navy was not well suited to deal with challenges of the future.

The Navy is working to figure out what changes are in order for its blue-water fleet, which is designed to fight a conventional enemy on the high seas. Until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Navy prepared for two major theater wars with the expectation that all other missions — from humanitarian relief to peace-keeping to counterterrorism — could be accomplished with the organizations, equipment and skills at hand.

Prepared by the Navy’s Information, Plans and Strategy staff at the Pentagon, the draft strategy acknowledges that the likelihood of major war on the high seas has significantly diminished. While maintaining the ability to conduct a major combat operation the Navy must be prepared to deal with a wider array of maritime security operations, including stability operations, the global war on terrorism (GWOT) and homeland defense.

The draft strategy anticipates a “limited number” of new requirements will take shape to fulfill these missions, and that some existing capabilities will need modification to keep them relevant in the new strategic landscape, “while other capabilities will need to be expanded in scale to meet the challenges of the post-9/11 security environment.”

To enhance its ability to contribute to the GWOT category, the Navy will enhance its theater security cooperation. “The maritime dimension of the GWOT — the ability of terrorists to exploit the seas — requires the U.S. Navy to operate in a manner analogous to that of the British Navy in the 18th century during its campaign against piracy,” the strategy states. The idea is to improve the proficiency of navies around the world at policing their own regional waters, freeing the U.S. Navy to work elsewhere.

[…]

The Navy, accordingly, is planning to adjust its near-term investment strategy to better handle future missions in the global war on terrorism, a move that service officials hope will anticipate recommendations from the QDR. The service is boosting spending on technologies and programs that will improve its ability to conduct network-centric operations and fund the first of a new fleet of expeditionary logistics ships that can be used as floating bases to launch thousands of ground troops and their equipment ashore.

“That’s exactly where we’re looking to fund,” said Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs.

The effort continues under Clark’s successor, Admiral Mike Mullen, making the hard sell to Congress in 2006 and earlier this year.

As retired Captain Patrick Roth notes, this is merely the Navy getting back to its roots rather than some radical departure.

Up until the 1970s, competency as naval infantry—sailors performing as infantry, and sometimes providing land based artillery support—was an integral part of the Navy’s operations and mission.

· The use of sailors as infantry (and as artillerymen ashore) was common during the 19th century. At sea boarding was a recognized tactic. Likewise, landings and operations ashore were normal. Marines were a minority and landings were generally a ships company evolution, i.e., involving both marines and sailors.

· Use of sailors as infantry was part of the late 19th century great debate by naval reformers over the direction of the Navy. The debate centered on how to best use “our officers and men as efficient infantry and artillerymen,” not around the desirability or utility of use of sailors as infantry. Everyone in the Navy accepted that the use of sailors as infantry was a required Navy’s competency.

· Sailors performed as infantry a lot: at least 66 landings and operations ashore on distant stations during the 19th century; 136 instances in the Caribbean and Central America during the first three decades of the 20th century; numerous times on China Station and elsewhere. Using sailors as infantry ashore was what the Navy’s primarily did during the Seminole Wars and the War with Mexico. It was the Navy’s most valuable contribution during the Philippine Insurrection. Operations ranged from election security, pacification, peacekeeping, land convoy escort, protection of roads and railroads, occupation, and guard duty to large-scale major combat operations against regular Army forces.

The SeeBees and other Navy personnel are performing ground functions in stability operations around the world, including the Horn of Africa, and they’re performing Vietnam-style riverboat patrols in Iraq. They’re also performing other jobs well within their existing capabilities, as announced last February:

The additional sailors will take on existing roles in the combat arena as medical corpsmen and in special operations roles, with more SEAL teams in some cases, [Adm. Mullen] said.

Other duties will include security roles, with some 500 sailors expected to take over operations at a prison inside the country, Mullen said. He would not say which facility the sailors would take over.

While not giving specifics, Mullen said sailors with expertise in disposing of explosive ordnance will also be brought in. Such teams are used in disposing of the countless weapons caches found in the country as well as assisting in roadside bomb removal.

This isn’t a measure of desperation but merely a realignment of the force to perform real-world missions of the type that will likely be the norm for years to come. This is long overdue.

Larry Craig may not resign from the Senate at the end of the month after all, reports the Idaho Statesman. And everyone’s favorite Republican, Arlen Specter, may be behind it.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig says he might reconsider his decision to resign if he clears his name in his arrest for disorderly conduct in a restroom sex scandal. That’s why Craig chose his words carefully during his resignation speech Saturday in Boise, according to a voice mail message he mistakenly left on a stranger’s phone. In the message obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Craig tells a man named “Billy” that his choice of language is deliberate because it leaves the door open for him to stay in office.

Craig made the call just minutes before his speech. “We have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30,” Craig said. “I think it is important for you to make as bold a statement as you are comfortable with this afternoon, and I would hope you could make it in front of the cameras. I think it would help drive the story that I’m willing to fight, that I’ve got quality people out there fighting in my defense, and that this thing could take a new turn or a new shape, it has that potential.”

The recording was offered for sale to the Idaho Statesman, which turned it down because the newspaper’s ethics policy precludes it from paying for information from sources. A Roll Call editor said that publication wouldn’t pay either, but managed to obtain the recording without charge.

The voice is indeed Craig’s, spokesman Dan Whiting said. Whiting would not say who “Billy” is. Later that day, Craig announced that he had hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Billy Martin, whom Craig hired to help him unravel the guilty plea Craig filed last month.

Whiting confirmed in an e-mail that his boss “intends to resign on Sept. 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

Craig’s move stunned even supporters. Most political insiders believed Craig had finally gotten the message from national Republican leaders, who saw his guilty plea to a humiliating sex-related charge as a blemish on the party’s reputation and its prospects for the 2008 election. “We didn’t know anything about this,” said a spokesman for Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, who stood with Craig during the resignation announcement. Otter, a congressman until his election as governor last fall, will pick Craig’s successor.

Craig’s hedging may play poorly even among Idaho supporters who believe Craig was railroaded, observers said. “I’m not sure how Idahoans will take it if they feel like they were misled by his statement on Saturday,” said Jim Weatherby, a retired political scientist at Boise State University. “He was playing a word game, apparently, with us.”

[...]

Craig’s latest move was a surprise to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who told reporters earlier today that Republicans had moved swiftly to condemn Craig because he had pleaded guilty to a crime. “I think this episode is over,” said McConnell, R-Ky. “We’ll have a new senator from Idaho, and we’ll move on.”

[...]

In the message, Craig mentions that he has the support of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a backer who Craig saw as pivotal for giving his efforts political legitimacy. The day after Craig’s resignation speech, Specter went on Fox News Sunday. “I’d still like to see Senator Craig fight this case,” Specter said. “He left himself some daylight, when he said he “intends” to resign in 30 days. I’d like to see Larry Craig go back to court, seek to withdraw his guilty plea and fight the case.”

AP’s John Miller has more on the Specter angle:

A telephone call Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urging him to consider fighting the guilty plea — and for his seat — affected Craig’s decision to reconsider his resignation, Smith said.

On Tuesday, Specter, senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested Craig’s GOP colleagues who pressured him last week to resign should re-examine the facts surrounding his arrest. “The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” said Specter, a former prosecutor. If Craig had not pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” Specter said.

And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. The fact of the matter is that Craig did plead guilty. Granted, it was to a misdemeanor and got him out of the more serious public lewdness charges, but that’s not fooling anybody. Specter’s role here is so bizarre that even Josh Marshall and his readers are baffled.

(And am I the only one who thinks it’s amusing that he’s hired Michael Vick’s lawyer to defend him?)

Despite his resignation from the Senate, the Larry Craig story won’t die. Arianna Huffington spent her Labor Day wondering, “In the Age of Terror, Isn’t Busting Toe-Tappers an Insane Use of Our Law Enforcement Resources?”

Sometimes a clever title is used as a hook to attract reader attention but the article itself goes in a different direction. Not so here:

In the consensus judgment of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the terrorist threat to our homeland is “persistent and evolving,” placing our country in “a heightened threat environment.” Given that chilling assessment, isn’t it the height of madness to use America’s finite law enforcement resources to seek out and arrest people for tapping the foot of a cute undercover officer in a restroom?

Does Huffington really believe that Sergeant Dave Karsnia of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Department would have been sent to North Waziristan to look for Osama bin Laden had he not been on toilet duty? Or even that there was something he could have been doing to thwart a non-existent terrorist plot at the airport that day?

The mere fact that something is designated Priority One does not mean that Priorities Two, Three, and Four Hundred Seventeen must therefore be ignored. The vast majority of our Armed Forces is doing something other than patrolling Iraq and Afghanistan or hunting for terrorists right now. Only a tiny fraction of our municipal police resources are working homicide right now; the others are dealing with what are comparatively less serious crimes.

While I disagree, there’s an argument to be made that cruising bathrooms looking for anonymous gay sex should be legal and that being occasionally hit on while in the airport bathroom is a price of living in a free society. If the consensus is otherwise, though, then some law enforcement resources must necessarily be used to deter people from this illegal conduct. One officer assigned for a limited time to the single restroom in the airport that has garnered the most complaints would seem an appropriate allocation.

UPDATE: Jeffrey Imm of something called “World Anti-Terror” emails to note that Minnesota has all manner of terrorist problems to which police could be devoting their time. He sends links to articles on MEMRI and similar sites about an Islamist website hosted in the state, a call by that website for defending terrorist actions, Muslim cabbies refusing to let people bring booze aboard, and so forth. It’s not clear what, precisely, he’d have the police do about these things, however.

Josh Marshall reports that a series of Web sites out there that “rate different public sex bathrooms around the country” and that “An airport bathroom, specifically one near a shoeshine stand behind the ticket counter, generated the most comments until Web-site users posted warnings in June that men were getting arrested there.”

While disturbing on a whole number of levels, it was inevitable that such sites would evolve. Indeed, it reminds me a lot of the way CB radios were used when I was a kid (and perhaps still today) by truckers and other motorists to warn each other of speed traps.

The Crikey! That’s a Big One Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Presidential Press Service)

The Winners:

First: Triumph – Larry Craig’s Dreamboat

Second: Bithead – The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human – sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.

Third: Dave schuler – Despot Magazine’s August Playmate of the Month

Honorable Mention:

elliot – Fishing easy in Chernobyl, I use a geigercounter to locate them.

Roger – Things must be improving in the Chernobyl area. The fish only had three eyes on this trip.

pudge – “DAH! I love the smell of Smirnov in the morning!”

charles austin – A shiver runs through it.

charles austin – Matthew McConaughey is going downhill fast.

charles austin – Putin just couldn’t fully internalize the concept of catch and release.

charles austin – “And all the comrades say I’m pretty fly, for a white guy.”

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

In Soviet Russia the fish hooks you

I for one welcome our Field and Stream overlords

Now is ze time on Shprockets vhen ve hook ze Trout

210, 211, whatever it takes.

The Thursday Contest really is the Walrus, goo goo g’joob.