#-# Let’s consider how things look from the perspective of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D., La.). You have a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. You have friends working on a big telecom deal, and they ask you to pull some strings to help it along. Of course you’ll help–that’s what friends are for, isn’t it? Your grateful buddies give you a token of their appreciation: $100,000 in crisp $100 bills. Like any reasonable person, you take the cash home, wrap it in foil, and put it in your freezer. But it turns out the FBI knew about the deal, you got the money from an informant, and the $100,000 is in numbered and recorded bills. On top of that, FBI video cameras recorded the whole thing. Then the feds raid your house, find the freezer, and take away the cash. And then–this is where it gets really rough–prosecutors send you a subpoena for documents in your congressional office related to the $100,000 bribe and other allegedly corrupt acts. What do you do? Why, the honorable thing: You tell them where they can put their subpoena. Stymied, the feds spend nine months trying to get you to cooperate before finally going to a court to seek a carefully limited search warrant. And then they do the search. So then what do you do? You start screaming, naturally. This is outrageous! I am protected by the Constitution! Okay, it’s a little lame, given that the Constitution doesn’t protect felonious behavior. But hey, any port in a storm. And here’s the kicker: When you scream, the House leadership, from Speaker Denny Hastert on down, comes to your defense–staking Hastert’s and his party’s reputation on the claimed constitutional right to use a congressional office to hide evidence of felonies. It’s great for you, but it does leave some people asking: Was that in the Contract with America? #-#In Iran, almost every week sees a new protest against the regime. Unfortunately, most of these protests escape the West’s notice, but some are large enough to capture headlines. So it was this week, when Reuters reported that up to 2,000 stone-throwing students clashed with Tehran’s police. They are angry with the treatment liberal academics have received since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed the Iranian presidency. According to one of the student leaders, politically active students have been expelled, while liberal professors have faced severer repercussions, including arrest. The protests are one more sign of the degree to which Iran’s rulers have alienated Iran’s people. No one can predict with certainty how close Iran is to a democratic revolution, but it behooves the U.S. to give all the rhetorical and material support it can to the democrats. #-#Osama bin Laden has again emerged from whatever cave he is hiding in as he encourages others to give their lives for his jihad. His latest videotape pronounces Zacarias Moussaoui innocent of the 9/11 conspiracy. Moussaoui was of course recently sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to complicity in the plot. Interestingly, bin Laden claimed to know exactly what “Brother Moussaoui” was up to–namely, “learning to fly”–during the time he was not involved in planning 9/11 (which, one vaguely recalls, had something to do with airplanes). The al Qaeda capo also decreed that everyone being held at Guantanamo Bay is innocent. An expert consulted by the New York Times opined that the tape might be a “deception,” and that “bin Laden was seeking to weaken the United States.” You don’t say. #-#Whoever believes that the children are our future–that we should teach them well and let them lead the way–ought to take a trip to Saudi Arabia. In 2004 a Saudi royal study group found that the school curriculum “encourages violence toward others.” You know, all that jazz about how the Jews are apes and the Christians swine. And how the families of murdered Christians and women are supposed to receive less “blood money” to compensate them for their loss than the families of murdered Muslim men (whose lives are so much more valuable). And test questions like: “Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than _________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters _________.” Luckily, the Saudi government is on the case, and they’ve been telling the world that all the objectionable material has been removed. Only, the material cited above is from the current curriculum, at least according to a new study by Freedom House. Ever since September 11 it’s been difficult to discern Saudi Arabia’s commitment to the War on Terror; this report hasn’t made the task any easier.