Anthony Lane, in the New Yorker, does a fine job of explicating the semiotics of Timur Bekmambetov’s (Khazakstan’s contribution to world cinema) first Hollywood production.

Anybody who sits through “Wanted,” Bekmambetov’s new movie, will be tempted to wonder if the life style of the characters might not reflect or rub off on that of the director. How, for example, does he make a cup of coffee? My best guess, based on the evidence of the film, is that he tosses a handful of beans toward the ceiling, shoots them individually into a fine powder, leaves it hanging in the air, runs downstairs, breaks open a fire hydrant with his head, carefully directs the jet of water through the window of his apartment, sets fire to the building, then stands patiently with his mug amid the blazing ruins to collect the precious percolated drops. Don’t even think about a cappuccino. …

Ms. Jolie is, I am pleased to report, in splendid form. Watch her as she runs along the top of a speeding train and, approaching a tunnel, lies back like a sunbather and lets the roof of it swoosh over her, basking in the satisfaction of a near-miss and, by extension, in the world’s unflagging worship of her cool.

CBS News:

Al Qaeda has successfully established a network for recruiting boys as young as 12 from across central Asia as it seeks new volunteers to enlarge its team of prospective suicide bombers and militants fighters, senior security officials from the Middle East have revealed to CBS News.

News of al Qaeda venturing into the former Soviet central Asian republics with a population that has a largely Muslim heritage marks a significant addition to reports earlier this year that the hardline group had recruited young boys in the Pak-Afghan border region.

Last May, a senior Pakistani security official showed a rare video clip to CBS News documenting a boy, barely 12 years old, using a machete to severe the head of a middle-aged man whom militants probably suspected as being a spy for the U.S.

Liberal woolymindedness reaches even more impressive depths of absurdity in Britain than in the US, as we see when prominent Al Qaeda terrorists cannot be extradited to any of a variety of countries anxious to try and punish him, and an impotent justice system can do no better than house arrest.

So scrupulous in protecting the interests of terrorist is British justice that newspapers like The Guardian are forbidden even to name the beneficiary of this systematic insanity.

The hiding place of a leading terror suspect was inadvertently released by Justice Ministry officials last night after he was freed from jail under unprecedented bail conditions. The man, who can be identified only as U, was released from Long Lartin, Worcestershire, after the appeal court ruled there was no reason to hold him indefinitely as he could not be deported to his native Algeria.

The media has been prohibited from publishing his address, or even identifying the town where he is to reside. When the Ministry of Justice supplied journalists with copies of his bail conditions, however, the document included his exact address in the south-east of England. …

U settled in Britain in 1994 and moved to Afghanistan two years later, where he is said to have forged links with Osama bin Laden. He is accused of presiding over a pre-9/11 al-Qaida network of north African terrorists who trained in Afghanistan in the mid-90s, and has links with men convicted of offences in this country and abroad. Ahmed Ressam, convicted of a plot to blow up Los Angeles International airport on New Year’s Eve 1999, was carrying U’s telephone number when he was arrested with 60kg (130lb) of explosives on the Canadian-US border.

Attempts to extradite U to the US collapsed when Ressam refused to give evidence against him. Prosecutors in France and Germany said telephone intercept evidence indicated U was the driving force behind a plot to bomb a Christmas market in Strasbourg the following year.

The Counterterrorism Blog, of course, operates outside the United Kingdom, and therefore is free to identify the lucky jihadist as Abu Doha.

——————————–

The Independent:

Among those who became a regular visitor to the Four Feathers and to the Finsbury Park mosque in north London was Abu “The Doctor” Doha, who has since been identified as al-Qa’ida’s main recruiter in Europe. Mr Doha, now 37, was a senior figure in an Algerian terror group called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC).

According to the head of the French internal security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, Mr Doha’s arrest at Heathrow airport in February 2001 as he tried to board a flight to Saudi Arabia came “a little too late”. Mr Doha, he said, was the “principal catalyst” in establishing a network of Islamic terrorists in London.

Before the Algerian was arrested, he organised travel for recruits to al-Qa’ida’s camps in Chechnya and Afghanistan where training included the production of chemical weapons, such as ricin. The recruits have since formed Europe-based cells, financed by fraud and adept at creating false travel documents.

London disciples of Mr Qatada and Mr Doha included Djamel Beghal, a French- Algerian since arrested for masterminding a plot to blow up the US Embassy in Paris, and Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan held in America as the “20th hijacker”, suspected of planning to take part in the 11 September attacks.

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767-1824), L’apothéose des héros français morts pour la patrie pendant la guerre de la Liberté.
[Apotheosis of the French Heroes Who Died for their Fatherland During the War for Liberty]
1802. Oil on canvas, 192×184 cm
Musée National du Chateau de Malmaison, Rueil

Like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams before him, the contemporary patriot and former Senator Jesse Helms has died on Independence Day.

He was born in 1921, the son of a rural police chief. He served in the US Navy during WWII, and attended Wingate Junior College and Wake Forrest University.

In 1960, he began delivering conservative commentaries on WRAL television broadcasting from Raleigh. His editorials made him famous in North Carolina, and he successfully ran for the US Senate in 1972. He served until ill health forced his retirement in 2003.

Jesse Helms was colorful and articulate, and a fearless fighter for Conservatism. His willingness to crack politically incorrect jokes, to tackle highly-charged issues, and to fight for hopeless causes regardless of his prospects of winning absolutely infuriated the left, and he was unsuccessfully targeted for electoral defeat repeatedly by major national liberal organizations.

The Conservative Movement has lost another of its heroes.

Obama gets to rail about the bad economy for which the probability of his election is responsible. Sometimes there’s no justice.

Glenn Reynolds.

Ferry Farm site

Washington Post:

On a bluff overlooking the Rappahannock River, 50 miles south of the capital city that bears his name, archaeologists have unearthed a site that provides what they call the most detailed view into George Washington’s formative years: his childhood home and, likely, the objects of his youth. ..

Washington’s family moved to the property in 1738, when he was 6, and he is believed to have lived in a clapboard-covered wooden home until his 20s. ..

There are marbles and wig curlers, utensils and dinnerware. A pipe, blackened inside, carries a Masonic crest and dates to when he joined the Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge.

The announcement of the long-sought discovery came yesterday, after seven years of digging and several disappointments.

From a concentration of charred plaster, they can tell that a fire thought to have destroyed the house on Christmas Eve in 1740 was much smaller and less destructive. An expensive tea set dating to the last decade that the Washingtons lived in the house tells them that the family’s financial strain suffered after Augustine Washington’s death probably eased. And from the layout of the house, with the front door overlooking the river, they described a “literal crossroads” in Washington’s life. Ships at that time could traverse the river to the Atlantic Ocean, and the area’s roads were opening up a world to the West, Levy said. …

Part of the difficulty with the dig arose because the land was far from untouched. Within the footprint of the house, 20th-century sewer pipes peek through the dirt, and a large area where the soil changes color reveals where Civil War troops dug a trench. In 1994, Wal-Mart proposed building a store on the property but encountered opposition from Stafford residents.

“It’s sort of a miracle that as much as the building is left, considering all the bad things that happened to it,” Muraca said.

Before finding Washington’s home, the team spent four years unearthing two other structures, only to find that one was too old and the other too new. The last one, which dated to about 1850, a century too late, became nicknamed among the crew as “Daddy’s little disappointment.”

Three years ago, team members homed in on the site where they would discover the house. They found two stone-walled cellars, two root cellars and the remains of two fireplaces. They also unearthed 500,000 artifacts, many domestic in nature and dating to the period Washington’s family would have lived there: sewing scissors, a brass wick trimmer, figurines that might have once sat on a mantel. A carnelian bead, which originated in India and made its way to Africa, was also discovered and is believed to have hung from the necklace of a slave. …

The project, headed by the George Washington Foundation and funded by National Geographic and the Dominion Foundation, will eventually include reconstruction. The archaeologists also are hoping to find structures that accompanied the house, such as barns and slave quarters. They believe they have found a kitchen.

Newsweek

Ferry Farm website

Pipe bowl with Masonic symbol

John Trumbull, The Declaration of Independence, 1817
Oil on canvas, 12′ x 18′, Rotunda of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

SIGNATURES:

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Ann Althouse, responds to James Risen’s New York Times story on the left blogosphere’s recent conniption fit over Obama’s flipflop on FISA Telecom immunity:

You can’t please everybody, and if you want to be President, you really can’t please Greenwald, Hamsher, and Kos. Obama is taking the right position now, and he should defend it frankly.

——————————

Andy Borowitz, at Huffington Post, was also impatient with the left.

The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.

Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.

“Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes,” wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. “He must be stopped.”

——————————

The Wall Street Journal notices Obama’s speedy march toward the Center with slightly less congratulation.

We’re beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of “George Bush’s third term.” Maybe he’s worried that someone will notice that he’s the candidate who’s running for it.

Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn’t merely “running to the center.” He’s fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he’s embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush’s policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?

Take the surveillance of foreign terrorists. Last October, while running with the Democratic pack, the Illinois Senator vowed to “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies” that assisted in such eavesdropping after 9/11. As recently as February, still running as the liberal favorite against Hillary Clinton, he was one of 29 Democrats who voted against allowing a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee reform of surveillance rules even to come to the floor.

Two weeks ago, however, the House passed a bill that is essentially the same as that Senate version, and Mr. Obama now says he supports it. Apparently legal immunity for the telcos is vital for U.S. national security, just as Mr. Bush has claimed. Apparently, too, the legislation isn’t an attempt by Dick Cheney to gut the Constitution. Perhaps it is dawning on Mr. Obama that, if he does become President, he’ll be responsible for preventing any new terrorist attack. So now he’s happy to throw the New York Times under the bus.

Next up for Mr. Obama’s political blessing will be Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy. Only weeks ago, the Democrat was calling for an immediate and rapid U.S. withdrawal. When General David Petraeus first testified about the surge in September 2007, Mr. Obama was dismissive and skeptical. But with the surge having worked wonders in Iraq, this week Mr. Obama went out of his way to defend General Petraeus against MoveOn.org’s attacks in 2007 that he was “General Betray Us.” Perhaps he had a late epiphany.

Look for Mr. Obama to use his forthcoming visit to Iraq as an excuse to drop those withdrawal plans faster than he can say Jeremiah Wright “was not the person that I met 20 years ago.” The Senator will learn – as John McCain has been saying – that withdrawal would squander the gains from the surge, set back Iraqi political progress, and weaken America’s strategic position against Iran. Our guess is that he’ll spin this switcheroo as some kind of conditional commitment, saying he’ll stay in Iraq as long as Iraqis are making progress on political reconciliation, and so on. As things improve in Iraq, this would be Mr. Bush’s policy too.

Mr. Obama has also made ostentatious leaps toward Mr. Bush on domestic issues. While he once bid for labor support by pledging a unilateral rewrite of Nafta, the Democrat now says he favors free trade as long as it works for “everybody.” His economic aide, Austan Goolsbee, has been liberated from the five-month purdah he endured for telling Canadians that Mr. Obama’s protectionism was merely campaign rhetoric. Now that Mr. Obama is in a general election, he can’t scare the business community too much.

Back in the day, the first-term Senator also voted against the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But last week he agreed with their majority opinion in the Heller gun rights case, and with their dissent against the liberal majority’s ruling to ban the death penalty for rape. Mr. Obama seems to appreciate that getting pegged as a cultural lefty is deadly for national Democrats – at least until November.

Miami Local10.com provides an inadvertently hilarious example of liberal media self-parody, gravely quoting with dead seriousness the relatives of the criminals who got shot by one of the victims of a hold-up, who, though 71-years-old, happened to be a retired Marine with a concealed-carry gun permit.

The family of one of the men who was shot by a retired United States Marine while they attempted to rob a Subway sandwich shop said the customer shouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

According to Plantation police, two armed men barged into the Subway at 1949 Pine Island Road shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday, demanding money from the employee behind the counter. When they tried to force John Lovell into the bathroom, he pulled out a gun and shot both men, police said.

Donicio Arrindell, 22, was shot in the head and later died at the hospital. Fredrick Gadson, 21, was shot in the chest and ran from the Subway, but police found him in hiding in some bushes on the property of a nearby BankAtlantic.

Lovell, 71, was the lone customer at the time. Police said he had a concealed weapons permit.

Gadson’s grandparents told Local 10 on Thursday that Lovell was wrong for pulling the trigger.

“He should not have taken the law in his hands,” said Rosa Jones, Gadson’s grandmother.

Her husband, Ivory Jones, also condemned the media for its portrayal of Lovell’s actions.

“I don’t condone what they did, (but) I definitely don’t condone the news people making him out to seem like they’re making a hero out of this man because he shot somebody down,” he said.

Victor Davis Hanson wonders why so many Obama supporters come from California’s most affluent residents, the very people who have benefited most from globalization and free trade and an economy energized by Bush’s tax cuts.

After talking to and observing lots of Bay Area affluent and staunch Obama supporters, I think the key to reconciling the apparent paradoxes is done in the following ways.

Many enjoying the good life worry that their own privilege in some sort of way comes at the expense of someone else, or they fret that their present lifestyle in ecological terms is hardly sustainable. That concern does not translate into much concrete action. SUVs (Mercedes rather than Yukons) are no rarer in Palo Alto than in Fresno, while such progressives are just as likely, or more so, to abandon the public schools, to keep their children out of East Palo Alto or away from the Redwood City ho polloi, and sent off to and on their way at elite prep and public schools. To sum up, Obama offers a reassuring sense of self-image: one can still maintain all the current mechanisms one is accustomed to in ensuring privilege, but visible support for Obama offers a sense of atonement and alleviation of guilt at rather modest cost. (We shall see whether a President Obama really ups the top rates, takes off FICA caps, raises capital gains, and so in fact takes a $50-70,000 greater annual cut from top yuppie joint incomes.)

Somehow an Obama sticker, sign on the lawn, or a lapel button has become the equivalent of a crucifix around the neck of a prosperous 16th-century burgher: easy fides of inner good and a valuable totem in reconciling the apparent irreconcilable.

John Donovan responds with a rant to liberal canards about the Iraqi Army.

Why haven’t we gotten a better Iraqi Army for all the money we’ve spent?”

Ummmmm — huh?

First, *we* didn’t get an Army — Iraq did. Sure, we foot the bill — just like we foot the bill for most of NATO during my growing-up years (pssst — Marshall Plan, remember?), and for a lot of our other allies during their growing or reconstruction spurts (*waving hi to all our buddies in South Korea and Japan*) — and Iraq is now an ally.

Second, everything else. Let’s take a look at the Army Iraq got.

Light infantry, with a decent mech capability and recent airmobile experience.

Operates jointly with allies as necessary or solo as required.

Battle-tested in urban warfare against urban guerrilla terrorists (hey, there’s a catchy term from the past – urban guerrilla. You know, what Weather Undergrounders like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were calling themselves before they decided to stop planting IEDs *in US cities* and go work for the Lightwalker).

The New Army kicks butt, takes names and, when it runs out of paper, stops taking names — because it was recruited, trained and organized while its officers, NCOs, soldiers and recruits were being bombed, shot, rocketed, kidnapped and executed en masse by the same scuzzballs who demand that *we* roll over and die because our existence offends their tender Wahabi sensibilities.

The New Army has some tough people, in my book, and I’ve got a real small book. They appreciate the hell out of what we’ve done for them — remember all those articles in the MSM about the cash donation the Iraqi *Army* made to California Wildfire Relief? About passing the hat for us while they and their families were getting killed just because they wanted an Iraq with a future?

Huh? There *weren’t* any?

Why am I not surprised.

The Sun Herald has a story which portrays John McCain in a far more favorable than usual light: coming close to beating up a communist!

(Senator Thad) Cochran told the Sun Herald he witnessed a confrontation between McCain and a Sandinista rebel decades ago in which McCain “got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.” …

Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain – who had won election to the Senate that year – and other members of a bipartisan committee of lawmakers called the Central American Negotiations Observer Group – met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the left-wing political party known as Sandinistas, about tensions in the region.

The atmosphere was tense, as the U.S. was pressing “pretty hard.” Cochran noticed a disturbance at the meeting table in a room lined with armed personnel.

“McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,” Cochran said. “But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.”

No punches were thrown and the two sat back down, Cochran said. The man, who appeared ruffled after the confrontation with McCain, was an Ortega associate, but Cochran said he was unsure of his identity.

Now if McCain just can succeed in convincing me that his reputed hair trigger temper is really there, and Teheran (and possibly Hanoi) just could be in trouble, why, I’d see his candidacy in a whole new light.