How bad are things when the British and even the French are scolding us for being naive about Islamic terror? And the Israelis? They think we’ve lost it.

I’m referring, of course, to the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that was published recently declaring that new intelligence suggests Iran halted its nuclear program back in 2003.

This report is the latest and most compelling evidence that the U.S. intelligence services have become highly politicized. For most of the last 7 years, officials in the CIA have been selectively leaking information to organs like the New York Times with the intent of undermining the Bush Administration.

We now have intelligence services that see their role as not just providing accurate information to policy makers, but rather as influencing policy. 

It’s very long and sobering, but I encourage you to check out this post by Tom Gross about the NIE over at NRO’s “Media Blog”. And excerpt:

Today marks a week since the release of one of the most unintelligent – and dangerous – intelligence reports in history.

Already, as a result, the Chinese are backing away from whatever support they might have provided for tougher sanctions against Iran, while Russia has used the report as another reason to oppose them. Behind the scenes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, now fearful that America will not be able to stop Iran going nuclear, have each decided in the last week to expand their own efforts to gain a nuclear capability.

It’s a dangerous time to attempt it, but it may be that our entire intelligence apparatus needs to be dismantled and depoliticized. Otherwise we may find ourselves depending on the Israelis and the French (the French!) for economic survival.

. . .But I’ve discovered something new under the sun.

It’s an internet radio station that plays nothing but the theme songs from television shows. When I launched it, the first four tunes I heard were the themes from:

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father; Frasier; Charlie’s Angels; Seinfeld.

It’s TV106.7!

Dear News Media,

Tell me all you want about the innocent victims that died in Colorado over the weekend. But I don’t want to know the names of the persons who showed up at YWAM or New Life with guns in their hands and murder in their hearts. I don’t want to know details of their troubled past. I don’t want to hear their former landlords, neighbors and teachers talk about how “quiet” they were.

I don’t want to see their faces on television.

Right after the shootings at Virginia Tech, your colleagues at NBC News found that the killer had mailed them what amounts to a “Press Kit” complete with video, photos and background information. It was clear that part of this nut’s motivation was to be a media star. And, in spite of pleas from numerous quarters, NBC obliged him. And all the other news organizations quickly followed suit.

At that time, many warned that giving a mass murderer that kind of publicity would inspire others. We are, after all, in an era in which everyone’s highest aspiration seems to be to “become famous”– a reality television star.  For example, Hugh Hewitt predicted that NBC’s decision would incentivize copycats. Columnist Jack Kelly wrote: “For the sake of a few dollars more, NBC has brought closer the day of the next public mass killing in America.”

So when a “troubled” kid shot a bunch of strangers in an Omaha shopping mall a few weeks ago, he left a note behind saying, “I will be (expletive) famous.” And he told a friend he “wanted to go out like a star.”

I wonder where he got such an idea?

It’s a little surreal to be watching Fox News and seeing a friend conducting a press conference under a banner that reads “Breaking News.” Brady is doing an awesome job too, and under insane circumstance.

As I write, the news reports coming out of New Life Church in Colorado Springs are still sketchy and confusing. But clearly some demonized person or persons has opened fire upon church-goers as the left services around noon.

This comes 12 hours after two YWAM workers were murdered in Denver. Whether the two shootings were connected is currently a matter of speculation.

 New Life has a fairly new senior pastor in my friend Brady Boyd, who was an associate pastor at my home church in Southlake, Texas—Gateway Church. I’m told that Brady has been in touch by phone with my pastor and has indicated that he and many church members are still in lockdown in the church’s basement.

This appears to me to be a very smart move by candidate Huckabee. Today the campaign unveiled a “9-Point Strategy for Immigration Enforcement and Border Security.”  

Immigration was the major issue in which Huckabee seemed to be out of step with other cultural conservatives. Of course, it is impossible to say whether this represents a true Damascus Road conversion based-upon having talked with hundreds of ordinary citizens while campaigning; or is just a campaign strategists calculation.

 I would wager a lot that he’s been getting an earful from guys like me wherever he’s been, though.

Here’s NRO’s resident immigration hawk Mark Krikorian on the plan. He seems favorably impressed.

Check out this astonishing post by Mark Krikorian over at NRO:

 Oh, Isn’t Little Hitler Cute   

Palestinians seem to have so internalized Jew-hatred that they’ve taken to naming their sons “Hitler,” as in Hitler Salah, Hitler Abu-Alrab, and Hitler Mahmud Abu-Libda. Now, people name their kids all kinds of things (there was a Soviet Armenian poem in the 60s, I think, about the stupid names peasants were giving their kids, including “Chevrolet”), but naming trends reflect larger social and political trends. For instance, “Mels” was a male given name back in the USSR — comprised of the first letter of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. But by the time I got there, in the 1980s, it had become a joke, with only a few old men left saddled with the moniker.

On the other hand, Venezuelans apparently give their kids odd names too, including 60 adults named Hitler (I wonder how they voted last weekend).

Mark Steyn is apparently as ambivalent as I am about who to go with in the Republican field. He says what I’ve been thinking:

As it is, the present field poses difficulties for almost every faction of the GOP base. Rudy Giuliani was a brilliant can-do executive who transformed the fortunes of what was supposedly one of the most ungovernable cities in the nation but on guns, abortion and almost every other social issue he’s anathema to much of the party. Huckabee is an impeccable social conservative but fiscally speaking favors big-government solutions with big-government price tags. Ron Paul has a long track record of sustained philosophically coherent support for small government but he’s running as a neo-isolationist on war and foreign policy. John McCain believes in assertive American global leadership but he believes just as strongly in constitutional abominations like McCain-Feingold. So if you’re a pro-gun anti-abortion tough-on-crime victory-in-Iraq small-government Republican the 2008 selection is a tough call. Mitt Romney, the candidate whose (current) policies least offend the most people, happens to be a Mormon, which, if the press is to be believed, poses certain obstacles for elements of the Christian right. 

Read the whole thing here.

Stuart: Oooh, the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes and that smug look on his face. “Oooh you’re gonna buy my chicken, oooh…”
Charlie: Dad? How can you hate the Colonel?
Stuart: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly!

Lost? Then you’ve never seen “So, I Married an Ax Murderer.” A sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=varaAADgC84

And some audio only: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjkFzHQCY04

Some thoughts from Rich Lowry on the Huckabee strategy here. An excerpt:

He has thrived on exactly what was in theory going to boost Fred—superior communications skills that have shined in the debates and in interviews; good gut political instinct; Southern charm and an inherit likeability; a very grounded sense of authenticity. Plus, the grass roots enthusiasm of social conservatives. 

Lowry’s thoughts about Huckabee’s interesting “Fair Tax” proposal here.