As journalism grows ever more fractured and shallow, The Washington Monthly remains one of the industry’s truly noble institutions. Its sense of public service and the national welfare isn’t often rewarded with the kind of “buzz” that magazine editors obsessively pursue — to the detriment of our collective IQs. Which is why it’s great to see the Monthly‘s ingenious and inspiring take on the silly ritual of college rankings rewarded with a big Washington Post write-up. (You can thank the magazine’s visionary founder, Charlie Peters, by checking out his well-received new book.)

Pat Robertson on Venezuela’s Chavez: “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.” Flabbergasting. But remember, this is the man who recently called liberal judges a more insidious threat than “a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.” If he survived that one, he can survive anything.

And now for something completely different: From a letter to the Times of London, here’s a creative, of-the-moment argument against exending pub hours in the UK:

Effects of new drinking hours

Sir, I turned teetotal having seen, as a barrister, many lives destroyed by alcohol: those of both otherwise law-abiding citizens, who committed acts of violence when drunk, and their victims.

Like Judge Charles Harris, QC, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges (report, August 10), my many Muslim friends also see large-scale loutish alcoholism, and the society which permits it, as decadent.

Allowing pubs to open round the clock will increase Muslim disaffection and support for those fighting such decadence. Extended drinking hours may cause more terrorism.

ANDREW M. ROSEMARINE
Salford, Manchester

I wonder what Richard Clarke thinks of this idea…

(Thanks to reader Alex Massie)
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The Houston Chronicle reports on a “hush-hush” September fundraiser for Tom DeLay featuring Dick Cheney. This is interesting for two reasons. One, it shows that the Bush administration remains totally supportive of DeLay (although it’s duly noted that Cheney and not Bush is the attendee). Second, it suggests that Republicans believe DeLay will have a serious re-election fight on his hands next year and needs mondo cash to wage it.

Is it really such a surprise that the credibility of the Able Danger story is in so much doubt? Not if you know much about the chief advocate of the theory, Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, one of Washington’s most eccentric freelance diplomats and self-styled terrorism experts.

It’s interesting to note that this controversy comes just days after Weldon — who was furious about not getting the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 2000 — publicly claimed he had House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s backing to assume the job in a couple of years. If the Able Danger story turns out to be a huge embarassment for Weldon, you have to wonder if he’ll still be Hastert’s guy.

P.S. Yes, that is assuming Republicans keep the House for a while. But that’s hardly a crazy assumption.

I only vowed to mostly resist my current pet obsessions while squatting here. And now Ross Douthat forces me to speak up on the astonishing new documentary Grizzly Man, which he declares “the movie of the year” with a wonderfully sophisticated (but readably short) argument about nature, religion, and, well, getting eaten by a bear.

Yesterday I mentioned an intriguing angle to the Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay relationship that hasn’t gotten very much attention. The House Ethics Committee is set to dig into the Abramoff-related allegations against DeLay this fall, and I’m curious to know how carefully the panel will explore the shadowy NaftaSib angle.

NaftaSib is a Russian oil and gas company which apparently underwrote a six-day “fact-finding” trip to Moscow that DeLay took with Abramoff in 1997, during which the two met with NaftaSib executives for reasons that remain unknown. The trip and DeLay’s meeting with NaftaSib officials was widely reported earlier this year. What I never saw was any follow-up on additional evidence released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on June 22 that shed some additional light on Abramoff’s relationship with NaftaSib, and on the company’s true nature.

That evidence included an eye-popping 2001 email between Abramoff and a Russian man named Vadim. The email concerned the purchase of paramilitary equipment, apparently including night vision goggles, that Abramoff intended to send to his Israeli West Bank settler friends.

A close read of the emails shows that this Vadim fellow had — you guessed it — a naftasib.com email address. What’s more, Vadim’s email signature identified him as “Assistant to Ms. Nevskaya” — presumably one Marina Nevskaya, a NaftaSib executive who reportedly had been an instructor at a Russian military intelligence school. The Washington Post has reported that NaftaSib “has business ties with Russian security institutions.” According to the Post‘s sources, DeLay met with Nevskaya in Moscow and subsequently in Washington.

It would be awfully interesting to know how aware Abramoff and DeLay were of these NaftaSib connections at the time of the 1997 Moscow trip. It would also be interesting to know whether Abramoff had been discussing the sub rosa purchase of military equipment back then, and whether DeLay himself knew anything about it. And, of course, it’d be useful to know why just DeLay was meeting with these people in the first place.

Just some of about a hundred fascinating questions for the House Ethics Committee to tackle in the months ahead.

P.S. You can read the most recent trove of Abramoff emails here and here. Nuke up some popcorn and enjoy yourself, it’s great stuff. Vadim’s note can be found on page 79 of the first PDF, embedded in a longer message from Abramoff to his settler friend Schmuel Ben-Zvi.

The On-Your-Own Club: Republicans flee from Robertson — Rumsfeld, Coleman, Martinez.

So Robert Novak is outraged at the White House for allowing the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to recommend the shutdown of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. That’s a humiliation for the state’s Republican Senator, John Thune, the man who dethroned Tom Daschle last fall; Thune had promised voters he’d protect Ellsworth and its 6,000 jobs.

Given that Democrats often accuse the Bush administration of placing partisan gain above the national interest, Thune’s bitter pill seems a chance for a conservative like Novak to challenge that theory — to praise the White House for taking the high road by not meddling with the nonpolitical commission’s cold-eyed decision. The fact that Thune’s direct personal appeals to the likes of Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney got him nowhere make for an especially compelling point.

Well, it turns out that’s not quite how Novak feels:

This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians forget politics… [D]amage to Thune as a national fund-raiser and candidate-recruiter seems irrevocable. He has been transformed from regular to maverick. Bush might ask himself: Is closing one air base worth this?… The Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections.

Yeah, “the book” is for sissies. Especially when your party only holds 55 Senate seats.

In a way, Novak’s oddly impassioned argument is like some hilarious inverse of Alec Baldwin’s legendarily ruthless “always be closing” monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross:

You can’t play in the man’s game, you can’t [un-]close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you [expletive expletives]?… [Never] be closing. [Never]. Be. Closing.

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Which raises the question: if Rove somehow does save Ellsworth, does he win a set of steak knives?

TPM readers have graciously not harassed me for ignoring the biggest story of the week, the new Iraqi draft constitution. I don’t really have the expertise to add much value here, so let me steer you to the foreign-policy Howitzers at work over in the America Abroad section of TPM Cafe. There’s an interesting sentiment here from Anne-Marie Slaughter:

I never thought I would take this position, particularly given what could be at stake for the women of Iraq, but I’m going to come down on the getting it done side. Let’s just remember, the compromises that our founding fathers made to get to a constitution – mediating between slave states and free states – included one that left slavery intact and defined each slave as worth only 3/5 of a person.

But here’s some man-bites-dog opinion from the right: On Sunday National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy, who has written some thoughtfully provocative things about the war on terror, responded to press reports about the constitution’s Islamic core with the appalled declaration, “This is where I get off the bus… I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace.”

After some browbeating by his colleagues McCarthy qualified that opinion until he could learn more firsthand; it’ll be interesting to see where he comes down now that the deal is done.

P.S. Also don’t miss this thorough – and despairing – evaluation by my TNR colleague Spencer Ackerman, who knows Iraq policy like Yngwie Malmsteen knows guitar scales. Spencer warns that Iraq may now be headed “into the abyss.” <$NoAd$> Shudder.