If you haven't heard about Maher Arar's extraordinary rendition--the policy by which the U.S. sends non-citizen terrorism suspects to nasty countries where they can be tortured without the scruples of the U.S. Constitution--go here.

David Wilkins, in his folksy Carolianian way, tells his dear Canadian friends to be a bit more understanding if the U.S. might occasionally see fit to send a Canadian national passing through JFK to a State Department certified hellhole to have his spine elongated, rectum penetrated, and fingernails torn out:

The new U.S. ambassador to Canada is making no apologies for Maher Arar's deportation to Syria, arguing that it's better to be safe than sorry in the fight against international terrorism.

Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion stated the position of the Canadian government in no uncertain words in a joint press conference with the Gwich'in First Nations in the Yukon yesterday:

"We are making all the arguments we are able to make, and we have strong allies in the United States, too."

...

"How many days of oil will it give them [the United States] to destroy this ecosystem?" Mr. Dion said in French. "Let's say it gives them half a year [of oil]. The solution is certainly not to destroy the Arctic Wildlife Refuge."

For those of you who don't know Dion, this guy is one of the sharpest guys in Canadian politics--both in terms of brains and the ability to play serious hardball. If he defends ANWR with half of the intensity he used to defend Federalism against the separatists, the Senate is going to have its hands full.

This is what you get, Conservative leader Stephen Harper, when you pin your hopes of winning power on sucking up to wingnuts and getting into bed with separatists instead of working on actual policy with a minority government that has not even been in power for a year: your star centrist glamor girl MP crosses the floor and joins the government. Oh, and did I add that this happened two days before Mr. Harper's attempted no-confidence vote (in partnership with the separatist Bloc Quebecois) on the budget to force an election? That's right--the Canadian Liberal-NDP temporary alliance just had its own Jim Jeffords moment, in an even bigger way. See below for an even sweeter part of the backstory....

OK, so although I liked Dean, I was a Clark supporter, so I have to admit that I have never really understood the Jodi-hate that circulates around here.

In any case, even if she did used to have an anti-Dem bias or whatever, she seems to have been quite won over by the convention, if this sugary piece is any indication.

is that the slimy Alberto Gonzalez (White House counsel) will never get anywhere the Supreme Court bench.

Newsweek's revelation that he wrote a memo attempting an end-run of the Geneva Conventions' "outdated" and "quaint" norms for the duration of the War on Terror (that is, forever) over Colin Powell's and the State Department's strong opposition should basically deep-six any aspirations of getting through the Senate.

Or if he does get nominated, then we'll know that the U.S. has seriously gone over a cliff.

I can't believe that it's been staring me in the face all this time (sorry if this isn't an especially interesting topic for you, if you never got the Clark bug like I did).

He probably isn't going to be VP: he has a lot of pluses, and a national profile now, and I'd love him, but the media doesn't. He still a bit of newbie, and Kerry needs someone who is gaffe proof, but more importantly, "Goring" proof--in other words someone the media lurves. I am thinking Edwards (and really hoping not Gephardt).

Clark can't be Secy of Defense: against the law.

Holbrooke probably has Secy of State locked up.

I see National Security advisor as too managerial and insufficiently dynamic for him.

Homeland Security is too domestic.

So what's left? We're running out of plausible top cabinet jobs for a guy with Clark's background...that is, of course, if you assume that we have to stick with the cabinet positions we've got. But recall that Clark has spent a good deal of energy advocating a new cabinet position for coordinating international development efforts. And whereas I had assumed that that idea had just sort of faded away with the rest of his presidential platform, here he is still plugging it in his shiny new (and I'd say must-read) Washington Monthly article (last paragraph):

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.clark.html

What better to be its first chair/head than the guy who proposed it? Thoughts?

Someone last week asked "where's Clark?" when decrying the relative silence of Dem Kerry surrogates.

But while the liberal with the fistful of stars was previously working pretty hard on the campaign trail without much recognition in some southern and midwestern states, he's getting some serious national exposure today.

He's all over cable defending Richard Clarke and Kerry with guns blazing--he's already put in appearances on NBC's The Today Show and with Faux's Paul Cavuto. And tonight he's slated for MSNBC's Debra Norville at 9PM ET and CNN's Newsnight at 10PM ET.

Besides comments about the general (heh) goodness of this for prying open a credibility gap between the Bush Administration and, uh, people who aren't completely evil, anyone have any thoughts about whether this whirlwind of duty says anything about Clark's (Wes) positioning for a possible Cabinet post?

O once-great standard of American journalism, why have you foresaken us?

Hours after confidently asserting that the NYT would cover the Clarke story, because I assumed that it's still a real paper, I see that it has--apparently buried far away from the front page. And for the worst indignity, check out the byline:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/national/22CLAR.html

Feh. How sad to have to see the Grey Lady just become grey...

Dear CNN, Drudge, and The National Review:

Due to your wonderful example of journalistic integrity, I have felt empowered to influence my democracy by publishing a suspect exit poll in as many places on the Internet as I can possibly manage during the morning of the next significant primary election. The poll will have no source reference other than "media sources," no cited margin of error, no cited sample size--in fact no cited internals or proof of any kind that I didn't just make up the numbers by rearranging Rush' Xanax prescription code.

I promise that after the actual vote totals come in, I will completely forget to say anything about the poll's provenance, accuracy, or internals later, nor speculate about whether it may have had a distorting influence on the election, media coverage, and turnout. I will take no responsibility for any of this--and will actually completely forget about it afterward.

Thanks very much for inspiring me and showing me that I can have an effect on our glorious democratic process.

You've probably already read the email I sent to Chris Matthews about their lack of debate coverage on General Clark's (finally!) very strong debate performance.

I just realized that there is an even bigger problem: Clark is getted shafted even harder by the AP, whose wire report/poll article give Clark one line in its bottom paragraph--and this story is the one that will of course be used as the wellspring of coverage on the debate for resource-short papers and lazy journalists all across the country.

Please let the AP's National Desk know about this. I'm not sure if this is the right number, but the AP's site seems to suggest 212-621-1600 as the most promising number.

Hi my friends,

After FINALLY giving a sharp and inspiring debate performance, especially necessary after last week's debate wrecked his NH chances for 2nd (I can say this because I am a Clarkie), the media such as Hardball have just decided to ignore Clark. This is a travesty of massive ramifications at this point in the race. What follows is my email to Hardball. If you want to do something about Clark getting shafted out of the coverage, please write something yourself. Also, if any of you have the email addresses of the AP reporter covering the debate or the pool reporter doing it, please let me know, as it looks like we're losing the media battle there as well, despite Clark's fine form in tonight's debate.

---------------
Dear Chris,

I am a little astounded that your panel immediately after tonight's debate did almost no analysis of General Clark's performance, which, if we count the number of applause lines, was the best among the non-Sharpton candidates. Considering the degree to which the media's judgment that Clark performed poorly at last week's debate hurt Gen. Clark's New Hampshire chances, shouldn't his big improvement (especially vis a vis Edwards, who in the opinion of your own analysts was "bland" and unimpressive) count for a bit more coverage than a single brief mention by Pat Buchanan?

This is partially conjectural, as I have never been the subject of a SUSA phone poll, but assuming that their polls are conducted similarly to other automated phone questionnaries, there's no secret as to why the undecideds are so low.

If there's one thing that pollsters can tell you with great certainty, it's that respondants are to a great degree reticent to give the answer "I don't know" to anything, even if they really have no bleeping clue as to what's going on. It makes them feel stupid--they don't even care what the other person thinks of them; it's that they themselves don't like thinking that "they don't know" regarding an answer. There's a cottage industry devoted to determining how much "noise" results from surveys as a result of this false certainty. If you combine this finding with how automated polls generally work, you can figure out why their undecideds are so low.

Even though I've never been the subject of a SUSA automated poll, I can guess what they're like:

"Hello, this is the SUSA automated phone poll. If the primary election were today, who would you vote for? For Kerry press '1,' for Clark press '2', for Dean press '3'...if you are undecided press the '*' key."

Unlike live phone polls, where you can say, "uhh...I'm sort of leaning between Clark and Kerry--mostly Clark, but I'm still thinking about it," a SUSA poll would just tell you to push a button. And a lot of people who would in a live poll give the above answer, or even only name one candidate but add the adjective "leaning" to it and therefore get recorded by a human polltaker as 'undecided', would in a SUSA just push the button for the candidate for which they think they feel strongest instead of feeling silly about hitting the undecided key. That's why the undecideds are so low in SUSA polls.

Throw this on the growing stack of Native American endorsements that Clark has piled up.

My liberal heart swells with pride at the support that the most consistently screwed over minority group is giving my candidate.

OK, so I know the Dean folks feel are pretty good at playing victim, what with other campaigns attacking them and getting misquotes in the AP and so.

But is anyone on Kos going to address the growing crescendo of dirty tricks coming out of the Dean campaign?

After Dean embarassingly had to deny that his national campaign authorized the attack flyers his state campaign printed when they back fired (which must be wonderful for NH morale), he's now facing charges about his staff and volunteers pretending to be Iowans--some of which his campaign has admitted are true. Now we have ARG independently reporting a rather nasty push poll meant to depress voter turnout. Any Dean kids going to admit that Dean isn't exactly the victim here?

According to the latest ARG tracker:

Dean 35 (-1)
Clark 18 (+2)
Kerry 12 (-1)
Lieberman 8 (+1)
Gephardt 6 (0)
Edwards 3 (0)
Kucinich 2 (0)
Others 0 (0)
Undecided 16 (-1)

For Clarkies, visiting this site seems like checking the fireplace on Christmas morning these days: more trending in almost exactly the direction we want (with the exception of Lieberman's glacial-speed rise, as we want to keep him below Kerry). Another day of this, and we will be locked in as the presumptive 2nd-place campaign in NH.