More on Rudy from TPM Reader JH from Michigan …

I think your reader from Illinois is spot on: the right has made the war on terror into a moral crusade, yes crusade, on par with abortion. That will be sufficient for most to get behind Rudy.

I spent the weekend with two old college friends who are movement conservatives (Focus on the Family was on the coffee table). They love Rudy. Sure, he is off on abortion, BUT he is right in their minds about the other great defining issue of our time… the GWOT: global war on terror.

Just as some Catholics (paging E.J. Dionne) argue that liberal social welfare policies are “life” issues, these guys see the war on terror in the same way. Remember, these are people who see in black and white and casting the war on terror as a war against evil provides a religious patina to Rudy’s efforts.

These guys also think that the right will force President Giuliani to pick pro-life judges so the abortion issue is further neutralized.

Running against Hillary would only enable the right to further suppress any questions they had about Rudy.

Rudy is a buffoon who has plenty of warts, but if those factors were a bar to the Oval Office we wouldnt have had the last 8 years now would we?

Given his statements sad is not the right word. But bizarre certainly and a weird coda to the career behind one of the great discoveries of the 20th Century: DNA. James Watson, who along with Francis Crick discovered DNA, the core building block and information transmitter of life on earth, has been forced to retire as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. This, of course, comes after last week when Watson told an interviewer that he is not optimistic about the future of Africa since, he believes, Africans have a lower average intelligence than whites.

Has he always been a racist? I’m not naive enough to believe that there are not many more than a few people who still believe such things. What does strike me as odd is that he expressed these views openly and unabashedly.

No profound observations. Just a passage that seems worth noting.

Late Update: TPM Reader LP responds …

In answer to your question, Watson has at least been a horrible racist for the past several years, probably his whole life, in addition to being a notorious sexist since the very beginning. I went to a talk of his at Berkeley while I was a molecular biology grad student there, and he spoke for an hour in a public setting making completely fabricated scientific claims as to links between skin color, obesity, happiness and sex drive. With some misogyny thrown in (women are only interested in getting men to buy them pretty dresses). Some female faculty walked out in the middle of it. The whole thing was written up by the SF Chronicle at the time, and it’s a pretty interesting story and they got absolutely every detail right:

I think the difference is that American scientists were used to it and had been ignoring it. It took an event outside the US to really bring the problem into focus (and more blatant statements, I suppose, though not by much).

Good riddance, I say.

Dems will block Mukasey nomination unless they get an answer from the AG nominee on whether waterboarding is torture.

Romney open to embracing Rudy’s insane foreign policy vision.

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At various times I’ve mentioned the DC insider sheet The Nelson Report. The writing style sometimes takes a little getting used to. But in tonight’s edition, Chris Nelson says there’s a growing consensus even among skeptics that that Israeli raid was on some sort of nuclear reactor under construction in Syria. For now I’ll simply pass on this link to a report just out from David Albright (who was highly credible and skeptical on the Iraq WMD questinos) and his colleagues at the ISIS think tank on the question.

I’m still quite skeptical. But very knowledgeable skeptics seems to be growing less so.

From the Post …

In approving far-reaching, new unilateral sanctions against Iran, President Bush signaled yesterday that he intends to pursue a strategy of gradually escalating financial, diplomatic and political pressure on Tehran, aimed not at starting a new war in the Middle East, his advisers said, but at preventing one.

Yep …

From the Post …

A U.S. military strike against Iran would have dire consequences in petroleum markets, say a variety of oil industry experts, many of whom think the prospect of pandemonium in those markets makes U.S. military action unlikely despite escalating economic sanctions imposed by the Bush administration.

The small amount of excess oil production capacity worldwide would provide an insufficient cushion if armed conflict disrupted supplies, oil experts say, and petroleum prices would skyrocket. Moreover, a wounded or angry Iran could easily retaliate against oil facilities from southern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz.

Former Iranian President Khatami has attacked President Ahmadinejad for falsifying government economic statistics and hiding the depth of the country’s economic plight.

From the Guardian, “Mr Khatami’s comments represent his first explicit criticism of his successor and follow predictions that he might run in the 2009 presidential election. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former aide to Mr Khatami, said the remarks were intended to prepare for a reformist revival at the March parliamentary elections.”

Presumably, if the US launches a war against Iran between now and 2009 this should increase the chances of Khatami’s unseating Ahmadinejad at the next election, yes?

(ed.note: Earth to bleary early morning readers. Yes, this last sentence was meant sarcastically. Tooth fairy still not real. Colbert not really running for prez … etc.)

We talk a lot about Rudy being at the front of the Republican pack. And there’s no question about that if you look at the national polls. But it’s very hard to ignore that Romney has a commanding lead in Iowa and a solid lead in New Hampshire. While he’s yet to take the lead in South Carolina, he’s rising fast. And he’s got the right people down there working for him (right in the highly amoral sense of the people who tend to win the contests down there).

The delegates at stake in these contests are negligible. But these contests tend to be defined by those early contests. There’s always someone who thinks he can wait till the bigger delegates races to start racking up numbers but I’ve never seen that work.