"Tens of thousands of Lebanese have taken part in a rally in Beirut marking the second anniversary of the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The pro-government supporters, who accuse Syria of involvement in Mr Hariri's death, converged on Martyrs' Square in the city centre," the BBC reports. Any closer to justice?

"A government-backed report released Tuesday blamed Belgian authorities and the ruling elite for collaborating with the Nazi persecution of Jews during World War II. Although Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has already recognized the level of collaboration, the report was the first time it had been presented in such detail," the AP reports.

"The Belgian authorities cooperated with the racial anti-Jewish policies during the occupation," and acted in a way "unworthy for a democracy," said the study.

"A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of them, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday," the AP reports.

The car stopped in front of the bus near Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan Province, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. It called the attack a terrorist operation and said the car's occupants fled on motorbikes seconds before the car exploded ...

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Rezaei blamed "insurgents and elements of insecurity" for the attack.

It does seem like opposition to the mullahs is growing. We've seen the parliamentary revolt start, is this the violent one?

"The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Wednesday that Muqtada al-Sadr has left the country and is believed to be in Iran, despite denials from the radical Shiite cleric's supporters. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell declined to comment on the reasons al-Sadr had left the country or give more details," the AP reports.

Typical of terrorist leaders and the like: They encourage their followers to die for the cause, but at the first hint of danger, they run to protect their own lives. Which is why Israel's policy of targeted assassinations was so successful: Terrorist leaders care for their own lives. No standing and fighting for them.

A new ad against London's mayor. Watch it here (via Nick).

Today's my last day here at It Shines For All. I've had a great time blogging at the Sun but it's time to move on. I'll certainly miss my interaction with all of you. If you want to keep up-to-date on when and where my future writings are appearing, shoot me a note at danielfreedmanis@gmail.com. Farewell.

As Rep. Jack Kingston says, the Democrats are advocating "staying the course" in Iraq. President Bush is offering alternatives.

As for the nonbinding resolution the Democrats are putting forward, we wrote on Monday:

Why only a nonbinding resolution? If the Democrats really want to stop the war they can cut funds. Congress does have the power of the purse.

The Democrats want to pass this resolution to appease their anti-war base, but they don't actually want to pass a real resolution -- knowing that it will cause them more damage in the long-term.

Passing an anti-war resolution means the Democrats will be remembered as the party who tried to stop the President and his generals and his troops from achieving their mission. If the American troops succeed anyway, it will be despite the Democrats. And if the troops fail, it'll because the Democrats tried to kneecap them.

And so the Democrats come up with a nonbinding resolution. But this resolution also has consquences. It damages the moral of the troops and encourages our enemies (endangering the troops more). This nonbinding resolution sends a signal that Congress isn't behind our troops.

This attempt by the Democrats to have their cake and eat it won't work.

"The Department of Education says that it will open a public school next fall dedicated to Arabic language and culture. The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of 40 new schools that will their debut in the city next September. Education officials say that although half the classes at the school will be taught in Arabic, they want to enroll a diverse student body. The school is set to open in Brooklyn," NY1 reports (via Drudge).

Maureen Dowd writes in the the New York Times:

So there he was, trying to meet the deep, inexhaustible needs of both Iowa activists and the global press behemoth on his first swing across the state, while giving up cigarettes ...

He was eloquent, if not as inspiring as his advance billing had prepared audiences to expect. He made his first Swift-boat-able slip when he had to apologize for talking about soldiers’ lives “wasted” in Iraq. He sounded self-consciously pristine at times, as if he was too refined for the muck of politics. That’s not how you beat anybody but Alan Keyes ...

He poses for the cover of Men’s Vogue and then gets huffy when people don’t treat him as Hannah Arendt ...

For a man who couldn’t wait to inject himself into the national arena, and who has spent so much time writing books about himself, the senator is oddly put off by press inquisitiveness.

Drudge reports:

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?” The hearing will be rescheduled to a date and time to be announced later.

"Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat of New York, has placed a hold on $86 million in proposed security assistance to the embattled Palestinian Arab president, Mahmoud Abbas, at the request of a Republican colleague, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida," The New York Sun reports.

The hold on the funding comes after Mr. Abbas signed a compact last week in Mecca with the leaders of Hamas, the Iranian-supported Palestinian Arab party that now controls most of the ministries in the Palestinian Authority. That deal, which has come under fire from Israeli leaders, would commit Mr. Abbas in principle to a national unity government without requiring Hamas to recognize Israel or prior international agreements to renounce and fight terrorism. The deal also obligates Mr. Abbas's Fatah Party and Hamas to adhere to a cease-fire in intra-Palestinian Arab fighting.

And as we've written in response to claims of Abbas's "moderation":

What about the 'Virgins of Paradise' video?

What about the commander of Abbas's presidential guard?

What about the terrorist groups that are linked to Abbas's Fatah party?

What about his funding Hamas terrorists?

What about his female suicide bomber unit?

What about the attack by his gunmen on the Palestinian parliament?

Or what about the terrorist group that is part of his Fatah party saying it will break a truce with Israel?

Or how about the role of his security forces in the kidnappings of westerners?

Or what about his praise for our enemy Saddam?

"The high-stakes battle for political positioning on Iraq is escalating between Senators Clinton and Obama as their campaigns took direct aim at each other yesterday," The New York Sun reports.

The sniping, which centered on the Clinton camp's accusing Mr. Obama of misstating Mrs. Clinton's war stance, came just days after the Illinois senator launched his campaign and highlighted how aggressive the fight for the Democratic nomination is likely to be.

"The effects of love on the brain are similar to those of cocaine, according to a team that has studied scans of love-struck people," the Daily Telegraph reports.

Romantic love could be an emotion as fundamental as hunger or thirst, according to the brain scans of young men and women who had fallen madly in love, or were lovelorn, by Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

"In a major reversal, defense lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr. now intend to close their case without testimony from the former White House aide or his onetime boss, Vice President Cheney," The New York Sun reports.

"When Mayor Giuliani officially declares his bid for the presidency in the coming weeks, his campaign will rest largely on the historic drops in crime levels New York City experienced during his time as mayor," The New York Sun reports.

Those decreases came with the infusion of thousands of new police officers and, more famously, the invention of a management tool called Compstat, which uses data about crime to respond to trends and hold commanders accountable for the conditions of their precincts.

"In a highly unusual move, France reported a military sale to Saudi Arabia and hours later withdrew the announcement," MENL reports.

On Monday, the French Defense Ministry said Paris had signed an agreement to sell refueling aircraft to the Saudi Air Force. The ministry said French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan signed an agreement to provide the kingdom with the Airbus Multi-Role Tanker Transport fuel tankers, produced by Airbus.

The deal was said to be worth up to 400 million euros. The ministry termed the contract a strategic agreement. Less than two hours later, the French Defense Ministry canceled the notice of its arms sale to Riyad. The ministry said a contract had not yet been signed.

"Mitt Romney failed to live up to his billing. After an unremarkable four-year term, we have seen what happens when a Republican governor refuses to take a no-new-taxes pledge, and then, not surprisingly, raises taxes (and morphs into a social conservative and runs full time for president instead of governing.) A Democrat wins. Now in Massachusetts, we are in the pitiable position of being one of a handful of states whose governor won’t even issue a proclamation honoring former President Ronald Reagan’s birthday. To which we GOP’ers in the Bay State say: Thank you, Mitt!," Virginia Buckingham writes in the Boston Herald.

Plenty has been written about Romney’s conservative conversion on social issues, but you in the New Hampshire GOP have historically been more concerned with how a candidate’s record affects your wallet than your bedroom. And on that score, Romney’s candidacy should give you pause.

Consider:

Your own governor, Democrat John Lynch scored better (receiving a B) on the annual fiscal report card issued by the libertarian Cato Institute than Romney (who got a C). The 2006 Cato report described Romney’s message that he was a governor who stood by a no-new-taxes pledge as “mostly a myth.”

"There is now a broad consensus in this country, and indeed in the world, that global warming is happening, that it is a serious problem, and that humans are causing it. The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded there is a greater than 90 percent chance that greenhouse gases released by human activities like burning oil in cars and coal in power plants are causing most of the observed global warming. This report puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming," John McCain and Joe Lieberman write in the Boston Globe. Both showing "regrettable ignorance"?

McCain's stance on global warming, however, is one of the reasons the New York Times likes him.

"Republicans have just experienced a bruising midterm election defeat. The president is suffering dismal approval ratings, and the party's erstwhile front-runner for the presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain, made his national reputation as a 'maverick.' The Giuliani rise evident now may be more than name recognition and residual support from his stalwart leadership following the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Giuliani's support may also arise from his having successfully moved an entrenched political culture in New York City, something national Republicans have not been able to do in Washington," Brendan Minister writes on Opinion Journal.

"Yet another man has betrayed Hillary Clinton. This time it's George W. Bush, who not only deceived her about weapons of mass destruction but, when granted congressional authorization to go to war in Iraq, actually did so. This, apparently, came as a surprise to her, although in every hamlet and village in America, every resident who could either read or watch Fox News knew that Bush was going to take the country to war. Among other things, troops were already being dispatched," Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post. It seems now Hillary is getting attacked from all sides for her shifting positions on Iraq.

"Iraq will close its borders with Syria and Iran for 72 hours as part of the drive to secure and pacify Baghdad, the Iraqi commander of the crackdown said Tuesday, hours after a suicide bombing in a mainly Shiite neighborhood killed at least 15 people," the AP reports. So even the Iraqis have given up talking to the Iranians and Syrians? Time for actual action: Closing the borders. Meantime, the New York Times still wants to appease.

From Israel's National Security Council:

In light of the increasing number of Israelis visiting Iraq and given the severity of the threats to them there, the National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Division wishes to remind the Israeli public that A) Visiting Iraq is very dangerous; the lives of Israelis in Iraq are at tangible risk; and B) Israel law bans Israeli citizens from visiting Iraq; visiting Iraq is a criminal offense.

"A vicious Mexican drug gang war has moved onto Internet video site YouTube, where rivals taunt each other with blood-soaked slideshows and film of their murder victims," Reuters reports.

"The United States on Monday offered rewards of up to $5 million each for a member of Lebanese Hezbollah and a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which the United States regards as terrorist groups," Reuters reports.

The State Department identified one of the men as Mohammed Ali Hamadei, saying the alleged Lebanese Hezbollah member took part in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 that resulted in the murder of U.S. sailor Robert Stethem.

"The Russian military is reported to be investigating claims that army conscripts were forced to work as male prostitutes in St Petersburg. The command of the interior ministry unit denied the claims made by the Soldiers' Mothers human rights group," the BBC reports.

"Before things get any more out of hand, President Bush needs to make his intentions toward Iran clear. And Congress needs to make it clear that this time it will be neither tricked nor bullied into supporting another disastrous war," the New York Times editorializes.

We have no doubt about Iran’s malign intent. Iran is defying the Security Council’s order to halt its nuclear activities, and it is certainly meddling inside Iraq. But we are also certain that the Iraq war has so strained the American military and so shattered this president’s credibility that shrill accusations and saber rattling are far more likely to frighten the allies America needs to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions than to change Tehran’s behavior.

Not punishing the mullahs is a signal to them that they have successfully defied the Security Council and interefered in Iraq -- with no consequences. It's also a signal that we're not concerned about their domestic oppression or support for terrorist groups across the globe.

The Times did make this point earlier this month, (on the back of calling a radical Islamist a "reasonable man"), and we wrote:

Ah, negotiating with Iran, now why didn't America think of that before? Why didn't Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton try that? Oh wait ...

Maybe it slipped the mind of the Times's editorial board that Mr. Diplomacy, Bill Clinton, negotiated with Iran throughout his presidency -- through the Europeans. The mullahs lied to him (they were caught lying for almost two decades) -- as Kim Jong Il similarly duped him. Now it seems the Times wants us to be duped by the mullahs right until they have the bomb.

Here's the bottom line: The mullahs are radical Islamsits. They want a world wide Islamic state. Surrendering Iraq to democracy is leading the Middle East in completely the wrong direction for the mullahs -- and they know once Iraq is democratic their population is likely to demand the same freedoms. Iraq is a battle of extreme importance to them. Thinking that we can negotiate with the mullahs is not just naive, it's dangerous. It's just going to cost more American and Iraqi lives.

There's one message that the mullahs understand, and that's force. If they think that they may be toppled, and a flyover Tehran would be one way to signal our determination, then only then may the mullahs stop meddling in Iraq.

Of course kicking Iranian agents out of Iraq would do much to help secure an American victory in Iraq -- and we know that hoping for an American victory is a sentiment forbidden at the Times.

And as for the Times's assertion that our allies in the region are not with us, perhaps the paper should listen to what the Gulf States are saying: They're terrified of an Iranian nuclear bomb and would support an American military strike against Iran to stop that.

Of course why would the Times let reality get in the way of a chance to appease America's enemies and bash the Bush administration?

Iraqis chant slogans while protesting in Basra, 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007. About 500 people launched a sit-in strike in front of the British Consulate in Basra in protest against the arrest of the Assistant Director of the Southern Power Distribution Department engineer Ziyad Rashed that was conducted by British troops Tuesday morning.

(AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

Update: Winner is Christa:
Excitement filled the air as a crowd of contestants gathered to try out for the hit Fox-Iraq show, "So You Think You Can Dance (In the Streets)".

"Venezuela's government has bought 28.5% of the country's top telecoms company CANTV, which President Hugo Chavez has accused of spying on him," the BBC reports.

The stake was bought from US-based Verizon Communications for $572m (£295m), more than $100m less than was offered by a Mexican tycoon last year. It is only a month since Mr Chavez called for the nationalisation of Venezuelan power and telecoms firms. It is part of his plans to turn the country into a fully socialist state.

Transcript:

OBAMA: We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and has seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.

Al Qaeda certainly would like hearing that. Seems like Prime Minister Howard had a point about Obama ...

"Iran will be able to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb and there is little that can be done to prevent it, an internal European Union document has concluded," the FT reports.

Well with no military to speak of, and it's diplomacy having been a complete failure, the EU document is probably right. America, meantime, has a military that can send Tehran and its nuclear program back to the stone age.

"North Korea agreed Tuesday after arduous talks to shut down its main nuclear reactor and eventually dismantle its atomic weapons program, just four months after the communist state shocked the world by testing a nuclear bomb," the AP reports.

The deal marks the first concrete plan for disarmament in more than three years of six-nation negotiations, and could potentially herald a new era of cooperation in the region with the North's longtime foes - the United States and Japan - also agreeing to discuss normalizing relations with Pyongyang.

Under the deal, the North will receive initial aid equal to 50,000 tons heavy fuel oil within 60 days for shutting down and sealing its main nuclear reactor and related facilities at Yongbyon, north of the capital, to be confirmed by international inspectors. For irreversibly disabling the reactor and declaring all nuclear programs, the North will eventually receive another 950,000 tons in aid.

John Bolton is of a similar view, the AP reports:

Already before its adoption, the deal drew strong criticism from John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who urged President Bush to reject it. "I am very disturbed by this deal," Bolton told CNN. "It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: 'If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded,' in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil for doing only partially what needs to be done."

And while we've been busy "negotiating" with North Korea, it's been busy helping Iran with its nuclear program. A sign of just how much we can trust Kim Jong Il.

All of this also ignores the plight of the oppressed people of North Korea people. They remain living in a police state complete with concentration camps. Where's our support for their right freedom?

We editorialized in September 2005:

As part of any final agreement made with North Korea, any aid could be made conditional on improvements in human rights. Mr. Bush could demand that Mr. Lefkowitz have access to the concentration camps, just as President Reagan did in respect of the Soviet Union. Surely this is what the North Korean people are hoping the Bush administration has in mind for November's discussions. But most of all a priority should be placed on preparing a military response to North Korea's nuclear program so that the moment intelligence discovers that the communists who run the North Korean state have been cheating, its atomic weapons program can be dealt with directly, before things reach the point that more countries than South Korea and possibly Japan are within range of North Korean guns.

"Key New York political leaders indicated yesterday they favor moving the state's presidential primary up a month to February 5 -- a shift that could help the 2008 campaigns of Senator Clinton and Mayor Giuliani," the AP reports.

National polls show the two New Yorkers are front-runners for their respective party's nominations. Meanwhile, the head of the state's influential Conservative Party, Michael Long, said that despite Mr. Giuliani's past support for abortion, gay rights, and tough gun-control legislation, "he has a very good chance at getting the [Republican] nomination" for president. Mr. Long said he expected Mrs. Clinton to be the Democratic Party's nominee.

"Mayor Bloomberg wants to revive a plan to erect a new building in an effort to avert what he calls the 'disaster' of losing the United Nations to another world city," The New York Sun reports.

On a visit to Washington yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg expressed concern about the United Nations leaving New York. According to several sources, the mayor intends to revive an old plan to build a "swing space" to house U.N. offices while its headquarters undergoes an ambitious $2 billion renovation.

Well, for the record, a lot of New Yorkers disagree with the mayor's assessment. They see the disaster as the United Nations itself, along with its capital master plan, which is fermenting daily ... For at the moment, the United Nations is occupying, in addition to the iconic tower of the secretariat and dome of the General Assembly, a huge complex at First Avenue and 45th Street, where it is paying a relatively low rent.

What worries the real-estate moguls is not that the United Nations might leave this complex of buildings -- but that it might stay. They want the United Nations out of the west side of First Avenue so that they can put the space to more profitable use -- condominiums, say, or other private sector purposes.

"The FBI lost 160 laptop computers in less than four years, including at least 10 that contained highly sensitive classified information and one that held 'personal identifying information on FBI personnel,' according to a new report released yesterday," the Washington Post reports.

"With Supreme Court justices becoming increasingly comfortable in the spotlight, Pennsylvania's Senator Specter says it might finally be time for their close-ups," the Washington Post reports.

Mr. Specter, joined by two other Republican and three Democratic senators, has refiled his legislation to require the court to televise its proceedings. Although getting the rest of Congress to agree still seems very much a long shot, Mr. Specter said there is a big difference between now and last year, when the bill did not reach the Senate floor.

Still no response from the Carter Center on the news that Carter interceded on behalf of a Waffen SS Guard.

As we wrote:

the only thing more damning than their silence is the note Jimmy Carter wrote pleading for a Nazi SS Guard. That probably explains the reluctance to comment.

"The archbishop of Paris and head of the Roman Catholic Church in France, Andre Vingt-Trois, said that France was doomed to a 'pandemic of anti-Semitism' during a visit to Israel," the AFP reports.

"The feeling is fueled by a certain amount of events but we can be French and Catholic and not be frightened about meeting Jews and even enjoy it." Calling himself "sensitive" to the feelings of French Jews who have suffered from anti-Semitism, he said that the "situation of Judaism in France and of Jews can only be followed with vigilance".

"A Dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court on Friday to convict him for eating chocolate, saying by doing so he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast," Reuters reports.

Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labour.

"Tehran deniers' conference marks a turning point not only because of its state sponsorship, but also because of its purpose. Up until now, Holocaust deniers have wanted to revise the past. Today, they want to shape the future: to prepare the way for the next Holocaust," Matthias Kuntzel writes in the Weekly Standard.

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Mayor Bill Purcell vetoed a measure Monday that would have made English the official language of Nashville, saying it was unconstitutional, unnecessary and mean-spirited," the AP reports.

"Negotiators reached a tentative agreement on initial steps for North Korea's nuclear disarmament, the American envoy to the talks said Tuesday," the AP reports.

Assistant Secretary of State Hill said the agreement outlined specific commitments for North Korea and would set up working groups to implement those goals to begin meeting in about a month. He declined to give other details.

"Hollywood defections have the same root as resistance to Clinton's candidacy among less glittering Democratic activists throughout the country. A substantial number of them do not want to participate in a coronation of the former first lady because they still doubt her viability as a presidential candidate. They question both her positions on the issues and her skills on the campaign trail," Robert Novak writes in the Washington Post.

The real reason for not desiring a Hillary coronation, as described to me by California Democrats, is resentment of her cautious sidestep rightward over the past six years. They still cannot get over her sponsorship in 2005 of legislation against flag burning. The whispered worry is that Clinton as the presidential nominee would be a loser in a year when the stars seem aligned for a Republican defeat.

"House Democratic leaders circulated a nonbinding resolution Monday saying that Congress 'disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush ... to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq,'" the AP reports.

The measure, expected to come to a vote by Friday, also says that "Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States armed forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq."

The Democrats want to pass this resolution to appease their anti-war base, but they don't actually want to pass a real resolution -- knowing that it will cause them more damage in the long-term.

Passing an anti-war resolution means the Democrats will be remembered as the party who tried to stop the President and his generals and his troops from achieving their mission. If the American troops succeed anyway, it will be despite the Democrats. And if the troops fail, it'll because the Democrats tried to kneecap them.

And so the Democrats come up with a nonbinding resolution. But this resolution also has consquences. It damages the moral of the troops and encourages our enemies (endangering the troops more). This nonbinding resolution sends a signal that Congress isn't behind our troops.

This attempt by the Democrats to have their cake and eat it won't work.

Update: Tom Elliot adds his bit on the Democrat's rhetoric, and provides a great quote from Orwell:

In their rush to denounce the commander-in-chief’s leadership, Democrats inescapably aid al Qaeda in Iraq and its cohorts. Like those before them, George Orwell said of the Brits advocating withdrawal from World War II: "This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other side."

"Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial," the AP reports.

Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days later.

"When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases," Nigel Calder writes in the Sunday Times (London).