by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, July 19, 2002 2:52 P.M. EDT

Sounding Off at the Saudis
Thirty-nine members of Congress have signed a letter to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, demanding that Riyadh release Amjad Radwan, a 19-year-old American woman held captive in the repressive desert kingdom. The Wall Street Journal's William McGurn told this outrageous story of Saudi barbarity and State Department perfidy last week.

Interns in the office of Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, circulated the letter and managed to pick up support from a tripartisan group of lawmakers: Republicans ranging from Indiana conservative Dan Burton to Maryland liberal Connie Morella; Democrats including Massachusetts' Barney Frank, California's Henry Waxman, New York's Jerrold Nadler and the District of Columbia's nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton; and even Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent and self-described socialist.

Wolf's interns are also planning an "intern rally" in front of the Saudi Embassy next Thursday to demand Radwan's freedom. But there's no reason to limit the rally to interns, nor is Radwan's captivity the only thing to protest. Rep. Burton says the Saudis are holding at least 46 Americans against their will. The Saudis oppress women and Shiite Muslims and throw Christians in prison for praying. Their media are filled with anti-Semitic invective, including, as we've noted, and noted, and noted, the writings of American white supremacists. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. The list goes on.

Anyway, here's the information about the rally:

When: 10 a.m. Thursday, July 25
Where: Saudi Embassy, 601 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington
Directions: From Foggy Bottom Metro stop, take 23rd Street to Washington Circle. Proceed around Washington Circle and get off on New Hampshire Avenue. Proceed down New Hampshire Avenue for approximately four blocks.
For more information: Call Rep. Wolf's office, 202-225-5136.

Iran Amok
Is Tehran's lunatic theocracy on the verge of collapse? Columnist David Warren thinks so. "Iran has come to the boil," he writes. "Against the background of huge public demonstrations, the reformist party that controls the largest block of seats in the elected but largely powerless Iranian Parliament [Wednesday] threatened to walk out, if the ayatollahs continued to stall measures for social and political change."

It comes in the wake of what Warren calls President Bush's "most under-reported speech," delivered a week ago today "while the media were checking out for the weekend":

The people of Iran want the same freedoms, human rights, and opportunities as people around the world. Their government should listen to their hopes.

In the last two Iranian presidential elections and in nearly a dozen parliamentary and local elections, the vast majority of the Iranian people voted for political and economic reform. Yet their voices are not being listened to by the unelected people who are the real rulers of Iran. Uncompromising, destructive policies have persisted, and far too little has changed in the daily lives of the Iranian people. . . .

There is a long history of friendship between the American people and the people of Iran. As Iran's people move towards a future defined by greater freedom, greater tolerance, they will have no better friend than the United States of America.

Warren says the president's was addressing the people of Iran:

[The speech] was intended as a kind of "Friday sermon" to Iran. The White House was delivering a "maximal" affront to Iran's "maximal" Shia fundamentalist regime. The speech deviated from the previous U.S. policy, which had been re-enunciated earlier in the week at a State Department press conference, of having nothing to say about Iranian demonstrations. It was fed to Iran in Persian ("Farsi" to the snobs), by a private, Iranian-exile satellite TV station in Los Angeles.

The speech didn't go totally unnoticed in the U.S.; Michael Ledeen made note of it on National Review Online. Ledeen has long been predicting the fall of Iran's government; when it finally happens, no doubt, he'll be crowing: Ayatollah you so!

Attack Iraq? Oui!
"The U.S. operation to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will take place in the coming months, even before November's Congressional elections, according to high-level sources in the French government following talks with American decision-makers and professionals in Washington," Ha'aretz reports:

Reports and analysis based on official sources in Washington reiterate the assumption that the operation will take place this winter, so that any failure will not reflect badly for the Republicans at the polls. But the French regard that as a strategy to lower Saddam's guard in the coming three months, while Congress is in recess and the election campaign heats up. Paris won't be surprised if the blow comes in the middle of August, while Bush is seen vacationing at his Texas ranch, in the form of a special forces raid backed by the CIA and precision air attacks.

August seems early, however, given both the heat and the tourism season in Turkey, one of America's most crucial allies in an attack on Saddam. As for the French, Ha'aretz says that "France's traditional reservations about a military operation against Iraq have been blatantly weakened in the weeks since French President Jacques Chirac was re-elected without the need for power sharing with the Left."

The Cynthia McKinney Fan Club
A few weeks back, the Indepundit blog carried a very amusing send-up of Democrats.com's "We Believe Cynthia" campaign, which backs Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who charged President Bush with having had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. "I have decided to focus my energies on supporting this noble effort," Indepundit wrote, and proceeded to catalogue McKinney's various outrageous statements since the war began.

Not to be outdone, an Israeli journalist named Israel Shamir has penned an "Ode to Cynthia." Here's a sample:

This woman with a name from the love lyrics of Propertius, the delicate Greek poet, who called himself "a pale knight in thrall of my angry Cynthia," is an all-American figure, brought forth by the spirit of America. The great country does not want to die. In such moments, the land calls for its sons and daughters to step forward to the line of fire. Cynthia heard the call. Support of Cynthia is the ultimate test of love to America, of belief in America's future in the family of nations, as an equal and friendly nation, not as an enforcer for creed of Greed.

It is paramount to rally around her, as the French nobles rallied to Jeanne d'Arc. Whether you are a descendant of African slaves or Muslim immigrants, a son of Confederacy or a Daughter of American Revolution, a freedom-loving Jew or a born-again Christian--it is the time to unite for Cynthia and for America.

This is so over the top that no one could possibly take it seriously. Oops, scratch that--the editors of the Arab News apparently did, running the piece with no evident irony.

Red-Baiting in Boston
Joining the hysterical outcry over Operation TIPS, a proposed nationwide Neighborhood Watch-style program for reporting suspected terrorist activity, is the editorial board of the Boston Globe:

Operation TIPS--the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - is a scheme that Joseph Stalin would have appreciated. . . . After the Berlin Wall came down and communism vanished into the dustbin of history, Czechs, East Germans, Poles, and Hungarians had to suffer through wrenching revelations about the reporting systems their totalitarian regimes had instituted. The Communist Party bosses in those captive nations justified the pervasive recruitment of citizens to inform on their neighbors as a requirement of security and a proof of loyalty to the party, the revolution, or the working class.

If Ashcroft wishes to assess the likely effect of the snooping regime he is about to implement, he could ask postal workers from the old days in Prague to explain what happens to a society's sense of solidarity when everybody on the block assumes that the mailman is telling the secret police that Comrade X has been reading bourgeois books.

For a bit of the shock therapy Ashcroft and his fellow travelers seem to need, they ought to consult some of the citizens in the former East Germany who discovered, when looking into their Stasi files, that under the former regime they had been spied upon for years by a husband or wife. . . .

Operation TIPS should be stopped because it is utterly anti-American. It would give Stalin and the KGB a delayed triumph in the Cold War--in the name of the Bush administration's war against terrorism.

We had no idea the Boston Globe was so anticommunist!

Wacky Zacky
Alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui tried to plead guilty yesterday, but Judge Leonie Brinkema told him to take a week to think about it. That's a wise move on the judge's part, since Moussaoui's lawyer, a man named Zacarias Moussaoui, is manifestly incompetent, apparently to such a degree that he thinks he gets a trial after a guilty plea. From the transcript of yesterday's proceeding:

Today the world should know that Moussaoui Zacarias have entered formally a guilty plea fully and completely, and he want to have trial as soon as possible to be able to, to show the extent of his guilt. That's only what matter now. I am guilty. Now the question is how much.

Our Friends the Egyptians
Egypt is one of the biggest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, the reward for having made peace with Israel more than two decades ago. Does Cairo deserve our cash? Consider this report from the Jerusalem Post's Uri Dan:

Among secret Palestinian documents seized by Israel at Orient House in Jerusalem a year ago was the Palestinian protocol of a conversation between [Yasser] Arafat and [Hosni] Mubarak [Egypt's president] five years before, in which Mubarak called another war with Israel "inevitable."

Arafat and Mubarak never dreamed this protocol would fall into Israeli hands. If, therefore, Mubarak could bleed and weaken Israel via the Palestinian Trojan horse, without itself becoming tied up in a war against it, that was his preferred option.

Terrorist Evictions
Israel may attempt to deter suicide-murderers by uprooting their family members who have "direct links" to terror. "One of the proposals under consideration . . . is to remove [their] families from the environment in which they have been operating and place them in other parts of the Palestinian territories, specifically in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Taub tells Ha'aretz.

Saib Erekat, a Palestinian Authority official, tells Reuters he thinks such evictions are "a war crime" and "a crime against humanity." Reuters doesn't say if he has an opinion on whether blowing up Israeli civilians is a crime.

The Fifth Column
Some Israelis, by their actions, just give ammunition to the Palestinians. Literally. "Five Israelis have been arrested on suspicion of selling thousands of rounds of ammunition to Palestinian militants, who may have used the bullets in terror attacks," the Associated Press reports. "Police said two of those detained live in Adora, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Their arrests shocked the small community. Adora was the scene of a shooting by Palestinian gunmen May 27 that killed four people, including a 5-year-old girl."

The AP says Maariv, a Hebrew newspaper, reports that one of the suspects, Moshe Cohen, "told police investigators he believed the ammunition was to be fired as part of celebrations at Palestinian weddings."

Christians Against Mass Murder
The Greek Orthodox Church has fired Father Atallah Hanna as its spokesman in Jerusalem, the Arabic News reports. As we noted last month, Hanna spoke at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, where he expressed his support for Palestinian "martyrs" who massacre Israelis. Arinous I, the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem, said "that any position to be made by Hanna as from now represents just his personal position and not necessarily the Orthodox church which voices its sympathy with the victims of terrorism and violence," Arabic News reports.

Dogs of War

"A pair of hot doggers taking their Wienermobile to the National Capital Barbecue Battle in Washington were pulled over by the Virginia State Police this week for driving too close to the Pentagon. . . . 'Obviously this was a mistake,' Virginia State Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 'This hot dog posed no threat to us.' "--United Press International, June 21

"A pilot busted for July 4th air antics that frightened beachgoers and authorities on heightened terror alert told investigators he and his friend were 'hot dogging' when they flew close to boaters and bathers, prosecutors said yesterday."--New York Post, July 18

Stupidity Watch
A "comedian" called Reno, interviewed by Salon, says of jihadi jailbird John Walker Lindh: "It's a real chiller, the way they treated that kid. Think of all the 22-year-old kids in the country, dreaming of the time they can travel across the world . . . it's going to have a negative effect."

Not Too Brite
Brite is a journalistic term of art that refers to an amusing, offbeat story, such as the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile item above. Reuters runs them under the heading "Oddly Enough." So here's Reuters' idea of a brite: "An Iranian man, convicted for raping and killing his 16-year-old nephew, will be executed by being thrown off a cliff in a sack, a newspaper reported on Thursday. If the unnamed man survives the fall down a rocky precipice, he will be hanged, legal experts said."

An Army of Generals
Eighteen state attorneys general, including six Democrats, have signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft offering their "wholehearted support" for the Justice Department's view that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to keep and bear arms (link in PDF format). The letter adds:

As the chief law enforcement officers of our respective states, we wish to make one final point that is outside the scope of constitutional analysis. Simply put, your position on the Second Amendment is a sound public policy decision. There is an increasing amount of data available to support the claim that private gun ownership deters crime.

'Shove It Up Your Subpoena'
If you thought the Moussaoui trial was a circus, you should have watched the House Ethics Committee hearings on Rep. Jim Traficant. The Washington Post has some choice quotes from the Ohio Democrat:

• "I want you to disregard all the opposing counsel has said. I think they're delusionary. I think they've had something funny for lunch in their meal, I think they should be handcuffed, chained to a fence and flogged, and all of their hearsay evidence should be thrown the hell out. And if they lie again, I'm going to go over there and kick them in the crotch. Thank you very much."

• "I did not own that farm. I was involved in no fraudulent activities. I insured that farm. I know the government is trying to take it, and they can shove that deed up their subpoena."

• "If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room!"

• "I wanted to have Playboy bunnies come on at night to meet with me. I wanted to be promiscuous with them."

The committee voted to recommend Traficant's expulsion from the House. An Associated Press dispatch wryly notes: "Traficant was convicted in April by a federal jury of bribery, tax evasion and racketeering. The question before his fellow lawmakers was whether he also was guilty of violating congressional rules."

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: The State Department puts Saudi interests over American ones.
• Daniel Henninger: Rebuild downtown New York by wrecking the city's worst cartel.
• Peggy Noonan: How has Sept. 11 affected our national unconsciousness?

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: Business has much to teach universities about accountability.
• Tony & Tacky: A public-school teacher says Jesus isn't real.
• Ned Crabb: Think it's hot where you are? Try Nicaragua.
• Brian McGuire: A report on the 24th annual "intensive study" of Marxism.
• Mollie Ziegler: The Missouri Synod is right to reject ecumenicalism.

And don't miss "WSJ Editorial Board With Stuart Varney," tonight at 9 EDT and PDT on CNBC.