Often the most damaging words used against politicians are the ones that are said against them by others. In the case of Newt Gingrich, the most damaging words against him may be those he has said about himself.

Kirsten Powers has written a column amassing examples of what she calls the former Speaker’s self-infatuation. They include this one: “I don’t want my country to collapse. I don’t want my daughter and wife raped and killed,” Gingrich told a reporter in 1994. After all, he said, “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz.” And then there’s this (from scribbled notes during a brainstorming sessions):

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The Dallas Morning News reports the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld the 2009 convictions of five persons who helped the Holy Land Foundation raise money in this country for the Hamas terrorist group. Andrew McCarthy gives a good summary of the decision at National Review. But, as he demonstrates, the significance of this case goes beyond the question of how Islamists sought to use American Muslims as a cash cow for Hamas. The details of the case, reiterated by the unanimous opinion of the three-member panel of federal judges, provide a history not just of American jihadists but their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood; yes, the same group that just won the Egyptian parliamentary elections.

The main points to be remembered here are that Hamas was founded by the Brotherhood in 1987 as Islamists sought a foothold among Palestinians looking for an alternative to the rival Fatah terrorist movement. The Brotherhood was also behind the founding of support groups for Hamas around the globe, but specifically in the United States. Their American “Palestine Committee” founded the Holy Land Foundation to raise money for Hamas. But it also, as the evidence in the federal trial showed, created other structures. The most important of them was the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was to be the political front of the Hamas support group.

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There has been much discussion at “Contentions” and elsewhere about the Obama administration’s foreign policy, as well as the positions put forward by the Republican contenders. Alas, if there is one common characteristic, it is that almost all the debate centers around reacting to events rather than enunciating a proactive American strategy.

The Obama administration has been reacting on the fly to the Arab Spring, and the embarrassing flip-flops by some of the Republican candidates have done the quality of the debate a disservice. While I am certainly critical of some of Obama’s naïveté regarding American adversaries and believe that his abandonment of Iraq represents a devastating own-goal, it would behoove any successor to recognize that first and foremost the problems we face come from adversaries abroad rather than their predecessors.

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Michael’s lament about endless bureaucratic hours wasted on totally unnecessary paper pushing is a beautiful example of government’s astonishing inefficiency. Multiply this by tens of thousands of other programs and procedures throughout the federal government empire and you have serious money being wasted.

And, barring a miracle (or a major war), it will continue to be wasted as there is no mechanism to correct it. Monopolies are always inefficient in this way, and governments are always monopolies. In profit-seeking companies in competitive markets, competition forces companies to look endlessly for ways to cut costs, for a penny saved is a penny earned. The corporate executive who finds a way to cut costs by, say, ten percent, is a hero. A government bureaucrat who does that is a goat. Bureaucrats measure their status not by the size of their profits, but by the size of their budgets and their staff. The last thing they want to do is cut out unnecessary procedures and forms that enlarge both budget and staff.

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When I worked at the Pentagon, 90 percent of my job was bureaucratic nonsense, and perhaps ten percent was substantive. My colleagues at the State Department, at least those based in Washington, described their jobs similarly. Within the U.S. government, managing bureaucratic exercises which long ago ceased their relevance involves hundreds of thousands of man-hours and costs the United States tens of millions of dollars.

Case in point: Country clearances. In an age where international travel is easy, visas for many countries are issued at the border if not entirely waived. But for anyone on official American business—even that which doesn’t involve diplomacy or meetings with foreign officials—the situation is unnecessarily complicated and involves getting a country clearance. In short, the U.S. embassy in the country where travel will occur must first be informed in advance that an American is coming, and then formally approve the visit. Earlier this year, for example, I had to get a country clearance for South Korea for a stay that was to be less than 12 hours—just enough to leave a ship and get to the airport—meeting no one along the way. That trip, however, involved endless bureaucracy amongst administrators in both the United States, and then some poor diplomat (or intern) to go through the hassle of formally responding. A 12-hour transit stopover in Lisbon required nearly half that time spent elsewhere on paperwork. Such nonsense happens hundreds of times each day.

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Back in May, Newt Gingrich received a lot of attention for these comments about Rep. Paul Ryan’s entitlement reform plan (emphasis is mine):

“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” Gingrich said on Meet the Press, when asked about Ryan’s plan. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

“I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change,” Gingrich continued.

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The JTA reports today that new population data show that during the past decade the fertility rate of Jews in Israel is on the rise compared to Arabs and other minorities in the country. Contrary to the demographic doom scenarios widely accepted both among Israeli and American elites, the most recent data are part of a growing collection of evidence that points to a stable and potentially growing Jewish majority in Israel proper, and perhaps even with the West Bank included.

Rather than having to make desperate moves in the peace process as a result of demographic trends, Israel may very well be in control of its own destiny, something all who are concerned for the Jewish state’s future should gladly accept.

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Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech reminiscent of his 2008 campaign, in which he urged Americans to “meet the moment” and “up our game.” At the Republican Jewish Coalition presidential forum today, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slammed Obama for not living up to his own standards, and criticized the president for sitting “on the bench” instead:

“I would like to remind the president that today is Dec. 7, 2011, not Jan. 20, 2009, he is way late to the game,” said Christie. “I challenge all of you to search the rest of the speech for any concrete accomplishments that would line up with the words he used. Let’s just use this quote, we need to meet the moment. Mr. President we need a leader who will lead us to the moment…and not be cautious and sit back and wait for someone else to do the hard work but to get out of the chair, and do the hard work yourself to make America a better place.”

“We need to up our game?” Christie continued. “[Obama] has had every opportunity to up his game for the last three years and he has been on the bench.”

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More than 30 years ago, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia, ending a four-year long genocide that killed up to two million Cambodians. This past July, the first judgment was passed down against a perpetrator of the genocide, the chief jailer of the main torture prison responsible for more than 15,000 deaths. Many Cambodians were disappointed with the 19-year sentence set down by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a function of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The Cambodian government wanted that trial to be the only one held by the Tribunal and has done everything in its power to prevent more cases from being heard. Many former cadres in the Khmer Rouge are now occupying high posts in the Cambodian government, and Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned further trials could throw the country back into civil war. The court has nevertheless pushed through with “Case No. 2″ against four senior members of the former Khmer Rouge government.

The ECCC is a UN-backed court, comprised of both Western and Cambodian judges. Without experience trying a case of this magnitude, the United Nations insisted upon having Western judges involved in every aspect of the case – from investigations to sentencing. Predictably, the court has fallen apart under the mixed supervision of both local and international judges and administrators. Less predictably, the UN-appointed Western judges have been the ones to have their impartiality and effectiveness questioned by observers and even co-workers. In what many on the ground describe as a mutiny, a team of UN lawyers wrote to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report that the actions of a German judge “[breached] international standards of justice, fairness and due process of law.”

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With the Islamist wave rolling through the Middle East—and Egypt’s disturbing turn toward more radical elements dismissive of democracy, tolerance, and liberalism—it is easy to dismiss democratization as foolish, and instead long for the days of the Arab strongman. This would be short-sighted.

Islamist strength is less a reflection of their ideology, and more a reaction to the hatred of the dictators who preceded them. As Egyptian-American sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim has said, the Middle East’s autocrats and theocrats are mirror images of each other; both recruit off hatred of the other and target the liberals in between. Perhaps one of the reasons why the disorganized secular opposition did so poorly in Egypt is simply because they never had sustained support to enable them to organize. Even as George W. Bush spoke of the need for reform, the U.S. embassy in Egypt actually went so far as to offer the Mubarak regime veto power over which independent civil society projects it funded.

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In a full interview to air tonight, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad tells Barbara Walters that his conscience is clear: “You feel sorry for the life that has been lost, but you don’t feel guilty when you don’t kill people.” Since misery loves company and there is strength in numbers, Assad is probably a bit relieved that the recent Russian elections have inspired some in the media to talk about a “Slavic Spring.”

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Russia to protest this week’s Duma elections, in which Vladimir Putin’s administration was caught engaging in widespread election fraud and still managed to gain only 50 percent of the vote, down 14 percent from 2007. But the Russian protests differ from the Arab Spring in at least one significant way: the Russian version is not leaderless. That is a near-term strength of the movement, but it may be its long-term undoing.

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U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman’s specific line, coming in the midst of a long apology about how Obama had to follow congressional instructions and defund UNESCO, comes in at about 3:38 on the video. Keep in mind that what he anodynely describes as a “short-term tactical victory” – which he finds “understandable” in light of Israeli policy – was in fact a full-scale Palestinian nullification of the Oslo Accords. Quote-unquote:

Now we are all frustrated by the lack of progress in the Middle East, and by the continued settlement efforts by Israel. So we needed to press harder to resume the negotiations; we needed to press harder to stop the settlements. But that frustration has understandably led to Palestinians pursuing short-term tactical victories.

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Mitt Romney is making the case against Newt Gingrich, but subtly here. Republican voters have been barraged with so much evidence of President Obama’s failures – his plummeting approval ratings, his failure to boost the economy – that it’s easy to believe any GOP candidate can defeat him. Some see this as the reason for Gingrich’s rise. During Romney’s speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition forum today, he urges caution:

“Many think because of his staggering failures, Obama will be easily defeated,” said Romney, adding that this wasn’t necessarily true. “[H]e will resort to anything. As you know, class warfare and demagoguery are powerful weapons.”

“It will be a choice between entitlement and merit; between appeasement and resolve,” Romney continued. “Our nominee must offer Americans more than just a choice to vote against President Obama.”

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Jeffrey Goldberg writes the Obama administration seems to be arguing Israel is “almost entirely” to blame for the stalled peace process, which “clearly isn’t true.” Goldberg’s own suggestion is Israel should do things it has either already done or would have no effect if it did them now:

“The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas seems uninterested in even sharing its ideas for compromise with Israel. Yet this doesn’t excuse the Netanyahu government’s inability to curtail the settlements or the settlers, some of whom behave despicably toward their Palestinian neighbors. The occupation will come to an end only through direct negotiation. The West Bank settlers should, if nothing else, be brought under the rule of law, and be encouraged to come home.”

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The Obama administration continues to talk about the necessity of stopping Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons but is doing very little. Its efforts at “engagement” with the ayatollahs flopped. So did their feeble attempt to craft an international coalition in favor of “crippling sanctions” on Iran to force them to halt their nuclear program. The president opposes a ban on transactions with Iran’s Central Bank that would halt the flow of crucial oil income into the Islamist republic that pays for their nuclear adventures. He will probably use waivers to avoid enforcing a bill just passed by Congress that would be the boldest sanction yet on Iran. So can we be surprised that America’s allies are wondering what they should do about the situation?

In the case of Israel, their only option is the use of force. But Saudi Arabia, which is just as worried about a nuclear Iran as the Jewish state, is thinking about its own nuke. That’s the hint dropped yesterday by an influential Saudi prince, and it ought to scare the Obama administration. If the thought of an Iranian bomb isn’t enough to shake them out of their complacence, then how about a Middle East nuclear arms race in which the Saudi monarchy adds its resources to the problem?

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House Homeland Security Chair Peter King is holding a joint hearing today with Senate Homeland Security Chair Joe Lieberman on the threat of homegrown terrorism in the U.S. military. Opponents like the ACLU are already claiming the hearing will “do a disservice to American Muslims serving our country.” But while King’s critics often talk about honoring Muslim Americans in the military, nobody has ever actually released the actual number of those who serve and have been killed in action in the War on Terror – and even the U.S. military has stayed mum on it.

It might surprise them that these statistics are included in King’s report:

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Politico has published a fascinating feature this morning discussing a trend that is well known among political observers but rarely discussed: the anti-Israel tilt of many of the key Washington groups that serve to promote Democratic Party interests and ideas. As Ben Smith tells it:

The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.

While the vast majority of congressional Democrats and much of its rank and file remain part of the national pro-Israel consensus, the fact that important elements in the party are seeking to undermine that coalition and replace it with an anti-Israel point of view should be deeply troubling to Jewish Democrats and others who care about the alliance with the Jewish state. It also illustrates that the willingness of the Obama administration to pick fights with and to unfairly blame it for the persistence of the Middle East conflict has an influential constituency within the party’s Washington elite.

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Yesterday, Mitt Romney announced he would not attend a December 27 debate hosted by Donald Trump, joining both Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman in the boycott. In response, Newt Gingrich wondered aloud why these candidates were “afraid” of Trump and said it would be taken as a sign they are “weak.”

That’s quite a silly statement. Romney, Paul, and Huntsman aren’t afraid of Donald Trump; they simply have enough wisdom to stay away from an event hosted by a publicity-obsessed buffoon. Nor is their absence from the debate a sign of weakness; it is, in fact, a sign they have a sense of propriety. That cannot always be said of Gingrich.

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