EDITOR’S NOTE: “Window on The Week” acts as our weekly, quick-and-punchy, “between-the-issues” survey of some of the hot topics of the day. “Window on The Week” gives you a sense of what “The Week” — a popular feature that appears fortnightly in National Review — looks like.

#-# New York congressman Charlie Rangel, a 35-year veteran of the House and an unapologetic race-baiter, is in line to chair the Ways and Means Committee if Democrats take back the chamber in November. This week he announced (promised?) that he will quit the 110th Congress if his party returns in the minority. There may be no better reason to get out and vote Republican this November.

#-# The Bush administration is bordering on looking serious about border security. The president is touting the deployment of 6,000 National Guardsmen, increases in the capacity of detention centers for aliens caught entering illegally, quicker deportation procedures, and greater spending on border enforcement. To weaken the magnet of jobs available to illegal aliens, Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the department of Homeland Security, is calling for stricter enforcement of the prohibition on hiring illegals. He would require employers to take steps to verify the eligibility of their workers rather than merely give a passing glance at some proffered document. He recommends that fines for breaking the law be significantly increased. And he wants the Social Security Administration to be able to share evidence of phony, borrowed, or stolen Social Security numbers with immigration authorities. All this looks rather like a spoonful of enforcement to help the amnesty go down. At the same time, it is coming in response to public demand. Congressional Republicans who reject amnesty or new guest-worker programs until the border is secure and the workplace effectively monitored also deserve credit for the administration’s new emphasis. Political leadership and public pressure may not move mountains, but perhaps they can tighten borders.

#-# Harry Reid, the leader of the Senate Democrats, is a moderate pro-lifer. Lately, he has been touting the “Prevention First Act” that he and Sen. Hillary Clinton have introduced. The idea is to push contraception as a way of reducing abortion. He just gave a speech denouncing Republicans for standing in the way of it. But contraception is already pretty widely available, and it is not clear that federal efforts to promote it will do much to reduce the abortion rate. There is, however, evidence that parental-consent laws and limits on public funding for abortion can bring the abortion rate down. Those ideas command majority support among voters. Unfortunately, many of the Democrats Reid leads — including his co-sponsor — oppose them. Until they come around, their claims to be rejecting ideology and seeking common ground will ring hollow.

#-# Polls show support for Sen. Joe Lieberman flagging as Connecticut’s August 8 Democratic primary approaches. His antiwar challenger, a Greenwich millionaire named Ned Lamont, has gained ground by courting the support of popular left-wing bloggers and campaigning with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. A Lieberman loss would be both good and bad for Republicans. Good because it would expose the Democratic mainstream as having lurched so far left as to exile reasonable voices like Lieberman’s. Bad because Ned Lamont is a man who told an audience at one of his campaign rallies that our nation is stronger when we “negotiate with our enemies.” It’s disturbing that someone so fundamentally unserious about national security should even have a chance to become a U.S. senator. Lieberman is an unreconstructed liberal on a great many issues, but he understands the threat posed by radical Islam, and for that reason his defeat would do more harm than good.

#-# Akbar Mohammadi, a student activist in Iran, has died in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. The cause of death was reported to be a massive coronary; but his sister, as well as some of his fellow inmates, believe he was poisoned by prison guards, and his body bore marks of torture. His parents have been detained by the authorities, and his family was not allowed to attend his funeral. He gave his life to bring freedom to the Iranian people, and his death is a reminder that undermining the mullahs’ regime is not just sound geopolitical strategy: It is also a great moral cause.

#-# Don’t expect much of the world to care about that cause — or to defend itself against the mullahs’ nuclear threat. The U.N. Security Council on Monday passed a resolution requiring Iran to cease uranium enrichment by August 31 or face possible diplomatic and economic sanctions. China and Russia, however, succeeded in weakening the resolution so that, rather than imposing sanctions immediately upon Iranian noncompliance, it would simply require the Security Council to hold more discussions. Iran, for its part, has rejected the resolution and continues to show no intention of halting its nuclear activities. It becomes less plausible each day that diplomacy will reform Iran’s rulers. We trust that the Bush administration recognizes this, and is willing to do the necessary to protect America and the world from the danger they pose.

#-# Somalia slid closer to Taliban-style rule this week when 34 government ministers resigned their posts. They did so to protest prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi’s unwillingness to reconcile with the Islamist militia that has seized control of much of the country, including Mogadishu, and subjected it to the tender mercies of Sharia courts. The ministers, though not belonging to the militia themselves, think that its dominance is inevitable and that it must accordingly form part of Gedi’s government. Somalia is a benighted chaos that has lacked effective central control since 1991, and there is little the West can immediately do to shore up Gedi’s government. But there is a real risk that Somalia, like Afghanistan before it, will become a base for terrorists. And that means it is a benighted chaos which demands our attention.

#-# The media and defense attorneys have done a masterful job creating an image of Guantanamo detainees as hapless victims of American abuse. In fact, the detention facility is packed with hateful thugs who have devoted their lives to subjugating women and decapitating infidels. This week, thanks largely to the persistence of the Landmark Legal Foundation , a report has finally surfaced focusing on the prisoners as abusers, not abused. Gitmo’s incarcerated jihadists have fashioned weapons out of sandals, toilets, fans, and radios. They have savagely attacked prison guards at every opportunity. And they have literally fought dirty: The report describes detainees’ assaults ranging from “head butting and spitting to routine dousing with cups filled with feces, urine, vomit and sperm.” They would do much worse if they were freed.

#-#Here’s one way of writing an article: Begin with the assumption that a small group of conspirators deceived our country into fighting a war with Iraq and are intent on doing the same with Iran; then find some characters to fit the script; and don’t worry too much about accuracy — just make sure the story’s heavy on insinuation and intrigue. It’s the sort of piece you might expect to read in Rolling Stone — which is where James Bamford’s absurd bit of writing can be found. Among the characters included in Bamford’s tale is NRO contributing editor Michael Ledeen. The baseless smears and implications leveled against Ledeen have already been thoroughly picked apart (see here and here ). Still, how pathetic that a man who has devoted himself to bringing about a free and democratic society in Iran (and who has opposed doing so by means of military force, by the way) should have to tolerate such rubbish.

#-#Even after acknowledging his drunken and profane tirade against the Jews last week, Mel Gibson insists that he is no anti-Semite. It may be that he is merely being cynical: that he is a thorough anti-Semite who finds it politic to deny the fact. Or it may be that he has some strong anti-Semitic impulses but recognizes, most of the time, that these impulses are wrong and should be resisted. It is both charitable and plausible to assume the latter. While reasonable people can disagree about the merits of his movie The Passion of the Christ, we do not think it was anti-Semitic; and this sad episode has given us no reason to change that view.

Read the Editors also on immigration, post-Castro Cuba, and the Mideast.