Edgewise

Friends don't let friends vote Republican

Brad DeLong is surprised that it took an allegedly criminal conspiracy run out of the White House casually commiting treason (and undermining the effort to rein in weapons of mass destruction and fight terrorism) in the name of a tactical political payback to make some principle Republicans consider abandoning their party. (Reasons Not to Be a Republican.)

I think, as with a combover, or a double-agent, the first compromises are small and easily excusable, and the line is crossed at some point without being noticed, and suddenly you are in bed with ruthless, dangerous people.

As a long-time political independent seriously considering for the first time ever in my life registering as a Democrat, so that I can vote for Howard Dean in the California primary, I've had to think about the party bedfellows and the rhetorical strategems I disagree with. It's no contest. I can stand up to wrong behavior and wrong politics in the Democratic part. I'll denounce any behavior I think wrong. But at this point, I don't see how I could work from within the Republican party.

I realize that more than ever the Republicans need progressive-minded principled people to steer their conservative ideology back into the realm of reality and out of the grubby hands of malefactors of great wealth, but I don't have the stomach for a project like that.

It's time to throw my lot in with the nominally liberal party and try to bring out both the essence of its ideals and the pragmatism required to wield power and develop constructive, sustainable coalitions to tackle the challenges of living in a great free country.

Outmaneuvering the Radical Right

My fellow Democrats:

When Arnold wins in California next week, there will be lots of talk by the national party that this was a successful plot by the Republican Right to subvert the will of the state's Democratic majority. But really, that's missing the point.

Arnold didn't need the recall to beat Gray Davis. In a general election, you could beat Davis. I could beat Davis. Pretty much everyone but Bill Simon could beat Gray Davis.

No, Arnold needed the recall to get past the straight-talking, unassuming, is-it-just-me-or-is-this-guy-a-little-cross-eyed? political juggernaut known only as: (add dramatic echo here) "Tom McClintock." Because in the California Republican primary, otherwise altogether unappealing fellows like Bill Simon and Tom McClintock just can't be beat.

With his boyish grin and small-town charm, and that way he's got of staring straight into the camera and...and...never ever raising taxes and stuff, Tom would have pounded Schwarzenegger into a steely-eyed, square-jawed, closet-liberal, Kennedy-loving, Austrian variant on polenta. Much like Simon thumped Riordan. And Dan Lungren thumped...whoever the hell it was he thumped while Davis was off making preparations for his triumphal march.

But not this time. This time the not-quite-so-Right Republicans got wise, see. They hatched a canny plan. And so, my fellow Democrats, take heart. This whole recall thing wasn't a successful plot by the Republican Right to subvert the will of the state's Democratic majority. Far from it! This was a successful plot by the Republican not-quite-so-Right to subvert the will of the Republican base.

Now don't you feel better?

Blood in the water

Talking Points Memo has a transcript up of today's White House press conference. Here are a few highlights:

QUESTION: Ambassador Wilson has said that he has information that Karl Rove condoned this leaking, and I've seen your comment that that's absolutely false --

McCLELLAN: It is ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

(In the future will we hear McClellan say, "I said it was ridiculous, but I never said it was false"?)

My favorite sequence deals with the selective clearing of Rove:

McCLELLAN: He wasn't involved. The President knows he wasn't involved.

QUESTION: How does he know that?

QUESTION: How does he know that?

McCLELLAN: The President knows.

QUESTION: What, is he clairvoyant? How does he know?

Which stories are 'too complicated'?

When news breaks that calls into question some liberal or left-wing belief or assertion, the right-wing/libertarian sector of the blogosphere is all over it. Generally, the liberals and lefties have less relish for such stories and if they cover them they tend to minimize or debunk them as best they can, occasionally conceding one if they are not utterly partisan or believe it will give them more credibility in the future.

Similarly, when the Trent Lott "nostalgia for segregation" story broke and was kept alive in the blogosphere until finally catching on in a big way, many of the better right-wing / libertarian bloggers (I call them Heinleiners) took Trent to task. Of course, no one liked Trent and he didn't take down a whole powerbase with him, and he was old-South racist-style conservatism embodied and new-business libertarian-style conservatives probably didn't mind sticking a fork in him.

Now the Plame Affair has caught fire after the story was first broken by David Corn in the Nation, its embers fanned by - once again - Joshua Micah Marshall, among others, and strangely, the Heinleiners in the blogosphere find it all "too complicated" to comment on just yet.

Now, if you've ever seen these guys go after a nuanced liberal argument like a pack of raging pitbulls, you may find this strange diffidence hard to understand, or to stomach.

For example, CalPundit is losing his patience:

The Valerie Plame story is "too complicated" for Glenn Reynolds to understand? Give me a break.

My take on it is that "too complicated" signals "I don't know how this one is going to shake out and I don't want to go on the record yet with any of a number of plausible defenses in case I'll be undermined in the next 24-hour newscycles."

A shorter version of my translation of "too complicated" is "no have talking points" (yet), or "talking points keep changing."

It will be interesting to see how this story is covered by political webloggers as it unfolds further. With legal (5-year prison terms for violators of the laws in question) and national-security ramifications (the alleged risking of the sources and methods of an undercover CIA agent in the context of tracking down loose weapons of mass destruction), as well as the targeted leak to the Washington Post that invigorated this new round of questions, I don't see how the story is going away without some blood on the floor.

Let's close this little update with some moral clarity (via Talking Points Memo) to help the people who find this all "too complicated" to comment on:

Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

George H.W. Bush

And then there were ten

I was reading the most recent primary comment thread at Kos and someone suggested ignoring the debates till some winnowing occurs, because ten is too many to keep track of.

It does seem as though only declared candidates should be invited to the debates. Are they all declared now?

I know the declaration is a formality with fundraising ramifications, but why not use it as a way of limiting the size of early debates? If you're in, get in. If you're not in yet, why should you be up on the stage?

Flip-floppering, part II

Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan made an interesting observation on the TV tonight. Instead of calling General Clark an outright flip-flopper, she hit a related but distinct theme, saying: never trust a man who tells you he's on a journey. Her concern is that Clark doesn't appear to have a fixed political philosophy. He's learning and changing as he goes. To Noonan, this is a critical weakness. Which puts her, I believe, at odds with the majority of American voters.

Judging by the last twenty or thirty years, on the list of things Americans care about in their Presidents, an iron-clad political ideology is about as important as a tap-dance routine. As in: If they have one, neat. If not, oh well.

Reagan did. Hurray! Clinton didn't. Hurray!

Most of us are looking for a leader with a good heart, a good head, and a tolerable personality. A fixed ideology? Whatever.

So sure, Clark is on a journey. For many voters, that's a good thing. Only statues stand still.

Flexible flip-floppering

One of the conservative critiques you'll be hearing about General Clark is that he's awfully indecisive for a general, that he's guilty of muddy thinking, and of course, that he's flip-flopping.

The Right takes flip-flopping very seriously. Bill Clinton was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, super-slick flip-flopper. Gore was a big-fibbing, sweat-streaming, sore loser of a flip-flopper. Howard Dean? A far left, nutty-eyed, fringe-freaky flip-flopper.

There's a pattern here...

Sometimes flip-flopping is a euphemism for lying. Or another word for campaign confusion. But most often, it's used to describe candidates changing their position over time. Me, I don't mind that kind of flip-flopping much at all.

Was a time we used to call that "analytical thinking." Here's how it worked: instead of having an ideologically pure, add-water-and-stir insta-fix on hand, folks would search of the right solution, not for all problems, but for some particular problem.

A flip-flopper might say: sometimes tax cuts are good, sometimes tax cuts are fiscally unwise. Or: up with American sovereignty! and up with a strong U.N.!

A flip-flopper might say: there's more than one reasonable way to go here. Let's find the best way.

Here's what General Clark said in his announcement speech last week:

"We're going to seek out the facts, search for the causes, to find the solutions, and in questioning and proposing alternatives, we're going to reach for the very essence of our democracy."

You can see where this guy's in big trouble.

His lips almost moving

Back in the 2000 primaries, one of Bush's trademarks was his ability to deliver an entire speech without once accidentally making eye contact. These cautious, close manuscript readings came in striking contrast to Bill Clinton's free-wheeling, sometimes seemingly improvised shtick.

Around the time of the Republican convention, something changed. Bush began to look up from his podium, to read long, elegant speeches as if committed to memory. How could this be? New smart drugs, stolen from Pentagon labs? Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory?

I have an alternate theory.

Listening to President Bush speak at the UN this morning, I was struck by the long, frequent pauses in his delivery. Not just at the ends of sentences, or in the spots where commas might normally rest. But after just about every short burst of words. For example:

"The success of a free Iraq [pause, pause, pause] will be watched and noted throughout the region."

Or in his closing lines:

"...both [the founding documents of the US and UN] point the way to peace [pause, pause, pause], the peace that comes [pause, pause, pause] when all are free [pause, pause]. We secure that peace with our courage, [pause, pause, pause] and we must show that courage [pause, pause, pause] together."

What is that? Drama? I don't know. Pause once, that's drama. But "pause, pause, pause"? It's more like he's falling asleep and then waking up again and then falling back asleep. Or perhaps that was me.

Watching Bush's face during these long pauses, his lips almost moving, his pupils slightly dilated, it seems clear that the President was listening. Carefully. To a miniature Bill Kristol, perhaps no bigger than an eraser or the head of Q-Tip, sitting on a tiny barrel somewhere in the President's head, script in hands, leading the President through the day's speech, line by line by line.

I'm not saying this is bad. And I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm just saying: There's a tiny little Bill Kristol embedded in George Bush's skull. And may God [pause, pause] have mercy [pause, pause] on our souls.

Hillary in '04: For the want of a newspaper

I was struck over the weekend by the enthusiasm the folks at Fox News have shown for a Hillary Clinton presidential bid in '04. Even though (almost) all evidence points against a last-minute Hillary run, they look at her numbers in the primary polls and say, "C'mon now, you can do it! Believe in yourself! Jump right in!"

We assume most of what's driving this is money. Fund-raisers on the right and left must love this story and pray it rages until the Iowa caucuses close. And of course, for Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc., Will-Hillary-Run? scores better ratings than Has-Graham-Dropped-Out-Yet?

But the tone on Fox News in particular - watching them practically reach through their monitors to beg former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal for some tiny scrap they could pin their hopes on - comes from an even more basic yearning.

They can't go back in time and beat Bill. (Not that they haven't tried.) But Hillary...Hillary's their best shot at finally holding in their hands that thing they've craved for 12 long years: a newspaper - any newspaper - with a big, bold, headline reading "Bush Beats Clinton."

Safire twists Clark's words (further)

I love reading the right-wing punditry on the Democratic presidential primary race. There's a lot of wishful thinking and projection mixed in with the gossip and rumormongering. There's still a total obsession with Clintonisma, and Bill Safire's column this morning in the Times follows in a long line of Hillary-obsessed predictions from the libertarian-neocon margin of the Republican universe that Safire inhabits.

(Does anyone else think he's been really disappointing on McLehrer, either mouthing obviously false talking points - he repeated the canard that the 9th Circuit is the "most overturned," for example - or defaming liberalism, which he calls leftism, in a generic way? Strangely, for example, he put down the ruling on the Recall, but then said he agreed with it, but not on the merits, sinply because he likes the idea of living with the results of elections. I agree with that principle, but it's strange that he was willing to applaud the outcome while criticizing the legal reasoning.)

What caught my eye this morning was that he took the already smeared-together statements Clark made about (1) the general attempt to associate 9/11 and Iraq emanating from "around the White House" and elsewhere and (2) his report that someone asked him to make that association on television on the day (or within a day of?) the attack, without being able to substantiate the claim. Admittedly, what he said could be read as implying that the call asking him to make the connection on the air came directly from the White House. Paul Krugman made this leap and reported it as such. Perhaps because Krugman's principled attempt to hold the Bush administration accountable to the verities of traditional conservative-style neoliberal economics and simple standards of truthtelling has turned him into a right-wing bogeyman, the same tired old pundits (from George Will on down) latched onto the Krugman interpretation of Clark's assertions.

Then, when Clark clarified without repudiating a whit of his original statement, the spin is that he is changing his story. Safire takes this calumny a step further, writing today:

He began by claiming to have been pressured to stop his defeatist wartime CNN commentary by someone "around the White House"; challenged, he morphed that source into a Canadian Middle East think tank....

Count the errors and notice the spin. Asked to assert that Iraq was connected to 9/11 has somehow now morphed into pressured to stop his defeatist wartime commentary. Clark's story takes plance on 9/11 or the day after. Safire's version would necessarily have to have come later. Clark attributed the clamor of people connecting Iraq to al Qaeda after the attack as coming from "around the White House" as well as from other sources. Safire ties the White House reference to the idea of someone trying to influence the substance of Clark's TV appearances (having already mangled what Clark reports he was asked to do).

George Will has already ignored demands that he correct his misstatements and creative editing of Clark's comments (available for checking on the Web via transcripts). Is there any point in trying to hold Safire's feat to the fire as well?

US perceptions of the middle east

I stumbled on a very interesting dialogue in the comments section of a post on Hoder's weblog called Bush benefits from terrorist attacks, like Sharon does, which itself pointed to Pat Buchanan's handicapping of the upcoming presidential horserace election.

Note, the comments on Hoder's entry are posted reverse chronologically, so the oldest ones come last.

In the thread, a Tehrani called Highlander, despite some of his own misconceptions about the US, manages to bridge the gap of understanding quite well, while critiquing American media-consumption habits and slinging western pop-culture references with the best of them. Equally strong-voiced Americans reach past their own initial statements in search of common ground.

Ultimately, the discussion revolves around how the US presidential election will affect the rest of the world, if at all.

Clark's no VP

I know a lot of my Dean-supporting friends think that saying "Wesley Clark would be a great vice president for Dean" will ward off the threat, but it ain't that simple. No one runs for vice president. And it's unseemly to pick one too soon. But there is a precedent for parading around a potential Secretary of State to lend some military gravitas to a governor with no national experience who spent much of the Viet Nam era as a playboy. It's too bad Dean can't squire Clark around the way Bush II did with Colin Powell.

I think Clark would make a great SecState or Secretary of the Pentagon, even, despite his image problems with the rank and file. (He's called a political general but name me any executive level leader who hasn't mastered the politics of the faculty lounge, the officer's club, the NGO.)

For that matter, Gephardt would be a good secretary of labor or agriculture. Keep him away from the Treasury.

Kerry's got vice president written all over his face.

Moseley-Braun belongs in the cabinet if she can clean up her ethical act and stop hobnobbing with African authoritarians. She's clearly brilliant and performs at a high level in debates and on the political gasbag shows. Not sure of the perfect cabinet position for her, though. Secretary of the Interior, maybe. Keep her away from State.

If I were president, I'd take one page out of Kucinich's book and establish a Department of Peace (and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution) and start working on integrating those skils into our daily lives. Make Dennis the cabinet secretary once the details are in place. Keep him away from

Put Lieberman's compassionate conservatism to work running housing and urban development. Keep him away from financial and insurance-related matters.

Edwards needs some gray in the hair, some more experience, and some gravitas to leaven his Paul McCartney charisma. Make him ambassador to the U.N. and put his charm to work there mending fences. Keep him away from health and human services.

More polarizing than Hillary, Sharpton is another mixed bag but a sharp cookie. I'm having trouble thinking of a suitable cabinet position for him. Keep him away from HUD.

Graham would make a good director of homeland security. Doesn't seem to have any doctrinal liabilities.

Have I covered everyone? I guess non-Dean supporters would take their candidate out of the above list and find a job for Dean, such as health and human services. (And keeping him away from what, the Pentagon? the IRS? BATF?)

Speaking of Hillary, she'd be the ultimate anti-Ashcroft as Attorney General. More plausibly, she could run EPA or - don't laugh - homeland security. Anyone who scares religious conservatives that bad can apply her bogeyman powers to our religiously conservative enemies. Take that, Osama! Captured, tried, and executed by a woman. OK, my imagination is running away with me there, just trying to provoke the knee-jerks.

Enlarging our elections

In Withering chads, filchyboy reminds me that the whole Recall hullabulloo is turning into a formal response to the 2000 Floriday debacle. The Supreme Court's "use once and discard" label on their Bush v. Gore decision seems to be coming undone. How ironic if an unintended consequence of the shoehorning of W. into his father's second term (the one Perot and that Not Our Kind Dear poor hick trash deprived him of) was a robust new voting rights regime in the courts.

Digby catches first anti-Clark slam

As anticipated by Adam Felbers, Digby at Hullabaloo, notes that Novak (a.k.a., "No Facts," or as Digby terms him, "Novakula") has asserted that Wesley Clark was in danger of being kicked out of the Army until he appealed to Clinton for his fourth star.

I imagine the whole idea of his popularity (or lack thereof) in the military is designed to disprove the idea that a regular soldier could be a liberal Democrat.

Brooks likes Bush's chances vs. Dean

Good discussion of David Brooks' Republicans for Dean op-ed from the Times today over on Metafilter. One pithy sampling:

That being said, most of Dean's appeal to me is the prospect of seeing him mercilessly beat the crap out of Bush in the debate if we get to have one this time around. Dean isn't so much about the left wing of the Democartic party as he is about the exasperated wing. But unless Clark somehow screws up or fizzles out he's money as far as I'm concerned. The point is to win.

Bush's Enron-style fiscal policy

Daniel Gross writes in Slate What Bush Learned From Enron - How to hide an $87 billion debt by pretending it's off the books.

Of course the point here is not so much that we shouldn't spend the (now) necessary money in Iraq but that the full, or growing, pricetag was hidden off the books in order to make additional tax cuts and pursue other longtime Republican fiscal plans, regardless of the health of the economy or the federal books.

As Gross puts it

The process of exceeding spending caps with supplemental measures is a little like an overweight person going to a dietitian and dutifully agreeing to adhere to a strict daily intake of 1,800 calories in three meals - and then eating a supplemental cheese steak to feed the emergency hunger pangs that set in every afternoon. And then charging the food to his kid's credit card.

It ain't just Krugman noticing this stuff.

California court halts recall

So does this ruling go to the U.S. Supreme Court next? I love it when they adjudicate our elections.

Digging up dirt on Dean

Interesting referrer at one of my sites today: True dirt on Howard Dean. Someone is looking for dirt on Dean, it seems to me. I hope they have a good opposition research team. I'm available!

(The search only found me because I have links to a gardening blog called True Dirt and because lately I've been posting a lot about Howard Dean, both here on this political site and over on my blog about blogging, but it's still kind of interesting.)

I'm pinging an open thread over at Dean's Blog for America to inform the campaign about this type of search for information to be used against Dean's candidacy.

Halliburton = Teapot Dome

Heard it here first. Halliburton is to Bush as Teapot Dome is to Harding. Pass it on.

Test of my dad's account

OK, if this works, it will appear to have been posted by my Dad.

Word: this message will self-destruct. No warranties implied or cetera.

Afghanistand

The first time Bush pronounced it that way in Sunday's speech I figured he had ellided it by mistake with the word 'and' that followed, but the second time he said 'Afghanistand' I had to wonder if he really thinks that's how it's pronounced.

Davis errs with slur

I've never been a big fan of Gray Davis, who doesn't seem to stand for anything but himself, but I also find this recall process to be misguided and suspicious in its funding and in the way it makes a scapegoat of Davis for issues that are either beyond his control or that were actively orchestrated by his enemies.

I also find it amusing the way Schwarzenegger pronounces the state's name (something like "Cullyforny-a"). However, I think Davis made a serious mistake when he decided to bash Arnold as a foreigner with a thick accent. This is an appeal to jingoism and prejudice and an embarassment to the principles of his party.

Weintraub showing bias

I've been following Daniel Weintraub's excellent California Insider weblog recently, because he posts California Recall updates several times a day. His reportage is very good, but lately it seems to me that he's been going easy on Schwarzenegger (bending over backward to be evenhanded, if you ask me) while lambasting Davis, Bustamante, and now Dean.

Not everyone in California thinks this recall is a triumph of direct democracy. Some of us are still smarting over how a billionnaire backbench Republican funded the "grassroots" signature-gathering required to put it on the ballot.

His characterization of Ward Connerly's latest anti-affirmative action measure (Prop 54) as "well meaning" also seems to be, well, naïve.

It's his weblog and he can editorialize how he wishes, but if he has biases, I'd rather he come out with them so we can judge his opinions through that filter.

Two views of Schwarzenegger

Two Republicans with two different takes on Schwarzenegger's chances.

Stop the madness

I'm feeling groggy today because I stayed up half the night reading most of Al Franken's new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. I expected it to be funny, and it is, but it is also infuriating and uplifting. I've seen the attacks on Franken, most particularly the ones by hysterical, splotch Bill O'Reilly, but I haven't seen any attempts to refute his arguments and I doubt I will. He does a great job od deconstructing the right-wing propaganda apparatus in this country. I also agree that there's something seriously wrong with Ann Coulter.

Saving the Bush presidency

Michael Watkins suggests that some heads will have to roll. But isn't everything working out just as planned, haven't we got them right where we want them, isn't our hat-in-hand approach to the UN just a continuation of our previous efforts? Inquiring minds and all that.

Edward 2004 blog up and running

The Edwards campaign has gone public with their Slashcode-based blog, with categories for each state.

My first Dean meetup

So I attended the Oakland Dean 2004 meetup at the Box Theatre last night. Here's a good shot of my emerging bald spot. You know, I've always voted, and usually for Democrats, but I've never before volunteered for a candidate or become in any way involved aside from passively following campaigns and then voting (and, I guess, enthusiastically discussing politics with friends). This time around I feel that I have to do what I can, large or small, to help change the direction of the country.

We went around that circle talking about why we were there, what we knew about Dean, why we were supporting, or considering supporting him, and asking and answering questions. There was a wide range of ages and political backgrounds represented, from Republicans to Democrats to Greens, with some people who expressed very little ideological leanings aside from particular issues (the environment, for example, or health care). There was general agreement that things are going in the wrong direction. About half of us had never worked for a candidate before.

Later, everyone met together and discussed ideas about how to improve the campaign. A big issue was reaching out to people who are not necessarily white, college-educated, and Internet-savvy. Often, the response was along the lines of ,"That's a great idea. You should do it." When anyone said, "Someone should..." the answer was often "You should...."

I like the way this campaign is devolving down to the local and even individual level and inviting us to become agents in our own political process. Some are worried that this will lead to a muddy message or to loose-cannon behavior. This is a real risk, but I think the old-fashioned rigidly hierarchical campaign approach cannot stand against this radically decentralized energy.

We were asked to give money (of course) and to sign up to participate in other events, and then they screened a Dean speech from April in San Francisco that at time had the 100 or so people in the theatre audience whooping it up and cheering. I got a warm fellow feeling from the other attendees and I'm on the lookout now for more ways that I can contribute my time, energy, and skills to this effort.

All hail the radical center!

Michele at A Small Victory finds that she is neither a leftist nor a rightist, but rather "just right" (with apologies to Golidlocks).

Iraq reconstruction ripoff meme

The story about an Iraqi contractor estimating $300,000 to repair a bridge and an American contractor getting the job with a bid of $50,000,000 has now made it from an Iraqi blog to US blogs to mainstream journalist Jon Carroll and back into the blogosphere.

OK, so it wasn't about ooooooil, after all. It was about ripping off the American public with sweetheart reconstruction deals. Halliburton and Bechtel have it pretty good. We knock down the infrastructure and they rebuild it, time and time again. (Hey, Halliburton even did business with Iraq during the embargo through their foreign subsidiaries.) Why isn't Robert Caro all over the news explaining Brown & Root's long history of gaming the US political system, with huge satchels of cash when necessary?

'I just consistently underestimated just how bad things were going to be'

LiberalOasis interviews Paul Krugman.

manfully trying to give the administration the benefit of the doubt

Just noticed Sullivan's second thoughts re the mess in Iraq. For the most part, though, he's still got his ideological blinders on when it's not his axe being gored (for example, gay marriage). Further up the page he sides with Somerby on promiscuous accusations of lying, but doesn't see the irony of "gets it right for once."

George Will smeared Wesley Clark

The drumbeat continues. Will Will fess up to his misleading cut 'n' paste job? Not half likely.

That tiresome O'Reilly factor

While it's nice - in a way - to see O'Reilly thoroughly fisked like this, isn't it really a waste of energy? Does the guy really matter? Isn't it about time he vanished up his own digestive tract?

Who is the fly, us or them?

Michael Watkins is calling for Wolfowitz's head.