CLINTON'S LATEST GLOW JOB
by Ann Coulter

October 11, 2006

With the Democrats' full-throated moralizing of late, I'm almost tempted to vote for them — although perhaps "full-throated" is the wrong phrase to use with regard to Democrats and sex scandals. The sudden emergence of the Swift Butt Veterans for Truth demonstrates that the Democrats would prefer to talk about anything other than national security.

Unfortunately for them, the psychotic Kim Jong Il seems to be setting off nukes, raising the embarrassing issue of the Clinton administration's 1994 "peace" deal with North Korea.

At least with former Rep. Mark Foley, you could say the Democrats' hypocritical grandstanding was just politics. But in the case of North Korea, Democrats are resorting to bald-faced lies.

Current New Mexico governor and former Clinton administration official Bill Richardson has been on tour, bragging about the groundbreaking Clinton administration negotiations with North Korea — keeping his fingers crossed that no one has access to news from 1994.

In 1994, the Clinton administration got a call from Jimmy Carter — probably collect — who was with the then-leader of North Korea, saying: "Hey, Kim Il Sung is a total stud, and I've worked out a terrific deal. I'll give you the details later."

Clinton promptly signed the deal, so he could forget about North Korea and get back to cheating on Hillary. Mission accomplished.

Under the terms of the "agreed framework," we gave North Korea all sorts of bribes — more than $5 billion worth of oil, two nuclear reactors and lots of high technology. In return, they took the bribes and kept building nukes. This wasn't difficult, inasmuch as the 1994 deal permitted the North Koreans to evade weapons inspectors for the next five years.

Yes, you read that right: North Korea promised not to develop nukes, and we showed how much we trusted them by agreeing to no weapons inspections for five years.

The famed "allies," whom liberals claim they are so interested in pleasing, went ballistic at this cave-in to North Korea. Japan and South Korea — actual allies, unlike France and Germany — were furious. Even Hans Blix thought we were being patsies.

If you need any more evidence that it was a rotten deal, The New York Times hailed it as "a resounding triumph."

At the time, people like William Safire were screaming from the rooftops that allowing North Korea to escape weapons inspections for five years would "preclude a pre-emptive strike by us if North Korea, in the next U.S. president's administration, breaks its agreement to freeze additional bomb-making."

And then on Oct. 17, 2002 — under a new administration, you'll note — The New York Times reported on the front page, so you couldn't have missed it: "Confronted by new American intelligence, North Korea has admitted that it has been conducting a major clandestine nuclear weapons development program for the past several years."

So when it comes to North Korea, I believe the Democrats might want to maintain a discreet silence, lest anyone ask, "Hey, did you guys do anything with North Korea?"

But by Richardson's lights, the only reason Kim Jong Il is testing nukes is because Bush called him evil. He said, "When you call him axis of evil or a tyrant, you know, he just goes crazy." This is the sort of idiocy you expect to hear from an illiterate like Keith Olbermann, not someone who might know people who read newspapers.

Richardson also blames the war in Iraq, bleating that the poor North Koreans feel "that there's too much attention on the Middle East, on Iraq. So it's a cry for attention." If Kim just wanted our attention, he could have started dating Lindsay Lohan. But Richardson says Kim "psychologically feels he's been dissed, that he's not treated with respect."

Damn that Bush! If only he had ignored the crazy Muslims and dedicated himself into sending flowers (and more nuclear reactors!) to North Korea, we could be actively helping Kim develop his nukes like the Clinton administration did.

As Richardson said, Kim "wants us to negotiate with him directly, as we did in the Clinton administration."

To go on TV and propose negotiating with North Korea like Clinton did without ever mentioning that North Korea cheated on that agreement before the ink was dry would be like denouncing American aggression against Japan in 1942 and neglecting to mention Pearl Harbor. Anyone who is either that stupid or that disingenuous should not be allowed on TV.

When pressed by CNN's Anderson Cooper about the failed deal, Richardson lied, claiming the 1994 deal prevented the North Koreans from building nukes "for eight years" — i.e., right up until the day The New York Times reported the North Koreans had been developing nukes "for the past several years."

Kim is crazier than any leader even South America has been able to produce. In fact, he's so crazy, we might be able to get the Democrats to take action. Someone tell Nancy Pelosi that the "Dear Leader" is an actual pederast. Then we'll at least be able to read his instant messages.

From The Corner at NRO: I'm no fan or proponent of gambling. However, Frist's meddling legislation is completely wrongheaded, and further evidence of the GOP retreat from its former status as the party opposed to federal intervention in personal matters.

Frist's Folly
Posted by Andrew Stuttaford

Well, I've finally got round to my emails on the topic of that Internet gambling/national security bill and there are far, far too many to reply to. No-one who wrote to me was a fan of the move and there were a good few that said this was the 'last straw' so far as their November vote was concerned. Most of the opposition to the law was on broadly libertarian grounds, but there was another strain too, which made interesting reading in the light of Congress' reputation at the moment.

Supposedly, the reason (apart, of course, from national security) that Senator Frist rushed through this legislation was to send a signal to the more moralistic voters out there. Maybe that will work, maybe it will not, but a revealingly large percentage of my correspondents felt that the real reason for passing the law was to protect the interests of Las Vegas, Indian tribes and other entrenched gambling interests. In other words, a piece of law designed to make the GOP look clean has made them look even dirtier than before.

One reader sent me in some words on the topic on July 11th from, of all people, Barney Frank:

"If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn't add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit. Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose?... People have said, What is the value of gambling ? Here is the value. Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn't that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do."

Barney Frank talking sense, Senator Frist not.

Draw your own conclusions

The Heightening Foley Feeding Frenzy
By Patrick J. Buchanan

October 10, 2006

Like the great white shark, a scandal must be fed, or it sinks to the bottom and dies. And the Mark Foley-congressional page scandal has not had a good feeding in 72 hours.

On Saturday, the Washington Post revealed that Kirk Fordham, Foley’s top aide in 2003, concerned about Foley’s fixation with pages, went to see Scott Palmer, chief of staff to Speaker Hastert.

According to Fordham and another source, Palmer, alerted to the Foley problem, confronted him. As Palmer shares an apartment with the speaker, it seems impossible that he and Hastert would not have discussed so volatile an issue.

Thus we have a credibility question.

For Palmer denies he had any 2003 meeting with Fordham to discuss Foley, or that he held any meeting with Foley himself.

The speaker says that not until 2005, when the issue of the “overly friendly” e-mail to a 16-year-old page came up, was he made aware of a Foley problem, and not until the day Foley departed did he know of the salacious instant messages. Yet Majority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Thomas Reynolds have said they alerted Hastert to the gravity of the situation months ago.

Clearly, there is either a serious outbreak of Attention Deficit Disorder in the GOP caucus, or someone is lying. Fordham or Palmer, or Palmer and the speaker. While lying to the public is not unusual for politicians, lying to the FBI can get you a reservation at Allenwood.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Fordham is gay. On Saturday, the Post reported that the House clerk who oversaw the page program and was sent by the speaker’s office to admonish Foley in 2005 was also gay. Fordham, Foley and the clerk are now gone. We may be looking at the Little Big Horn of the Log Cabin Club.

What, then, are the elements of this multiplex scandal?

First, there is the deplorable instant messages of Foley, which all have condemned. Yet if Foley had had sex with pages, rather than write them lurid IMs, he would have violated no law. For under D.C. law, the age of consent has been dropped to 16. And there is no evidence Foley violated that law or had a sexual encounter with a teenage page.

How can Democrats credibly denounce a 52-year-old gay man for sending dirty instant messages to a 16-year-old, when Democrats have legalized sex with 16-year-olds in D.C.? Isn’t that a mite hypocritical?

There are questions as well for the news media.

If ABC was concerned about the Foley threat to the pages, why did ABC hold up the story until October? And if the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald knew of the first e-mail, and chose not to out Foley, why is Hastert condemned for reaching the same conclusion?

In the Baltimore Catechism, detraction is listed as a sin against the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Detraction does not mean lying about one’s neighbor; it means revealing a truth ruinous to the reputation that the listener has no right to hear – i.e., if a woman has had an abortion years ago, one cannot, in good conscience, broadcast that to the public without committing a grave sin.

The problem with Washington is that detraction is what modern campaigns are all about: digging up dirt on one’s opponent and feeding it to a cooperative press.

Yet if Hastert and those two newspapers declined to destroy Foley for one indiscreet e-mail, did they not do the better thing?

Would it not have caused a storm of outrage against the GOP and speaker if, after one e-mail, they had outed and ruined Foley? Would not the GOP have been fairly charged with a cruel act of homophobia over a single “over-friendly” e-mail?

There are other questions. As it was a Democrat front group, CREW, that sent the instant messages to the FBI in July, were not Democrats aware Foley was prowling the page dorm, and did they not remain silent, preferring to await the politically propitious moment to release the IMs?

Is the Democratic concern for the “children” genuine, or did they leave the pages vulnerable until they could drop their stink bomb on Foley and the House Republicans five weeks before the election?

As of today, this is a Republican scandal. A GOP congressman was responsible for the sordid messages to pages. The House GOP leadership failed to investigate rigorously. And some GOP staff and members may have lied and may have covered up. Any Republican who is proven to have done so should be removed from any position of power.

But to have the party of gay rights, many of whose leaders have marched in gay pride parades alongside the pedophiles of NAMBLA, acting “shocked, shocked” at GOP torpor in outing and ousting its flaming gay member is, to put it mildly, unconvincing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN LENNON

From The Pinstriped Blog at YES Network:

The Error of the Torre Era
Torre is forever a success, but the magic has run out

Steven Goldman

CLUELESS JOE?

I am as big a Joe Torre supporter as likely exists outside of his immediate family, and yet I find I am losing faith.

To backtrack for a moment, yesterday I talked about the poor management of the Yankees during the 1980s. That was my formative period as a Yankees follower and it influences my perceptions of the team to this day. Sometimes when writing about certain leaders, biographers will point out how observing some landmark moment had an impact on that leader when it came time for him to make his own big decisions. Franklin Roosevelt never forgot how Woodrow Wilson squandered his reputation, political capital, and health on the League of Nations fight, so when it came to getting into World War II he was very hesitant to buck isolationist public opinion. In trying to figure out how to counter Josef Stalin's moves on Eastern Europe at the end of the war, Harry Truman took a hard line because he saw parallels to the appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Lyndon Johnson saw how the Republicans attacked Democrats over the "loss" of China, so he couldn't bring himself to get out of Vietnam.

When I look at Joe Torre, I don't only see Torre. I see the diminishing returns in Billy Martin III, IV, and V. I see Bob Lemon, Gene Michael, and Clyde King managing the Yankees in the same season; Bucky Dent's utter helplessness; Dallas Green's pointless bravado; Buck Showalter answering, "It's an internal matter. We'll deal with that internally," to any question, from, "Why didn't you pinch-hit for Mike Gallego in that spot?" to "How do you feel about one of your players being arrested for multiple homicide?" I see Lou Piniella getting fired because he wouldn't return the owner's phone calls. In short, I see an age of darkness that Torre vanquished.

Joe Torre has an understanding of the politics of being the manager of the Yankees that all of his predecessors going back to Ralph Houk lacked. First, the manager doesn't own the team. Mr. Steinbrenner does. Mr. Steinbrenner's moods, whims, fetishes, fancies, are well known at this point. More has been written about George Steinbrenner than any other owner in the history of baseball. The only manager in Yankees history who can claim not to have been forewarned was Houk, who came with the franchise. Everyone else knew what they were getting into. Torre understood that if you are not prepared to accept the owner as he is then you shouldn't take the job.

He also understood that it is better to cooperate with the media than struggle against it. Those Subway commercials with Willie Randolph actually come close to capturing reality: Torre knows you have to give the media the good sandwiches. Working for the Yankees in any job is difficult. It really can be turbulent inside that Stadium. Having the media working against you can only make things harder.

Finally, he seemed to do an excellent job of forging the often overpaid, sometimes eccentric, collection of Derek Jeters and Ruben Sierras into a winning whole. I say "seemed" because we don't get to see that part of his job. We only get to hear about it from him and some of the people involved. We have to take their word for it.

Torre is a rotten tactician, though watching opposing managers I suspect he pulls fewer rocks than the average skipper. Despite this, when I consider the list of managers above and contemplate the alternatives — Joe Girardi, who lost his job in Florida because he clashed with the front office and yelled at the owner? Lou Piniella, who maneuvered himself into the Tampa Bay job and then spent three years bitching about the club? — I can see the Yankees taking a step back into a less rational time.

Still, Torre's day may be at an end. All managers, even the great ones, reach a point where they have been in one place too long, gotten too comfortable, too satisfied with their own judgments, too predictable with the players to keep them motivated.

Age seems to have something to do with it. Mr. Torre turned 66 this year. In the entire history of baseball, few have managed at 65 years old or older. The most notable, and this is close to the entire list, were Connie Mack, Casey Stengel, Jack McKeon, Felipe Alou, Frank Robinson, Tommy Lasorda, Leo Durocher, Wilbert Robinson, Paul Richardson, Walt Alston, Ralph Houk and Herman Franks. Total pennants and World Series wins among them: 40 and 23. Total pennants and World Series wins ages 65 and up: eight and five. These consist of three pennants and two championships for Mr. Mack, four pennants and two championships for Mr. Stengel, and one pennant and one win for Mr. McKeon. History suggests that managers have to stay young, both so they can relate to the younger generation and so strategy doesn't pass them by.

Torre might have reached that point. His best instincts failed him this year. I can't put it any better than my New York Sun colleague Tim Marchman did, so I'm not going to try:

He's not a failure... Not being a failure doesn't make him a success, though, and it's his handling of (Alex) Rodriguez that really marks the difference between why he should stay and why he should go. Torre has never been much of a strategist or tactician — his main strength has always been his ability to manage the egos of players and put them in position to succeed. He not only hasn't done that with Rodriguez, he's brutally humiliated him, first by participating in the shameful and repulsive team hit job on the embattled third baseman that ran in Sports Illustrated last month, and then by batting him eighth in a playoff elimination game. No matter how badly Rodriguez was hitting, he wasn't hitting any worse than anyone else on the team. Singling him out that way made him the story, rather than the collective failure. It was a crass move and it didn't work.

My Baseball Prospectus amigo Joe Sheehan, sticking to the tactical end, hit the nail on the head as well:

In an elimination game, against a right-handed starter, Joe Torre started Melky Cabrera over Jason Giambi. I think Joe Torre is one of the men most responsible for turning a franchise that had become something of a joke into a dynasty, and when he one day is inducted into the Hall of Fame for it, I will stand and cheer. But he had a terrible season, and in assembling his lineups the last two days, he choked. Benching Gary Sheffield and playing Giambi against Rogers, then reversing that against Bonderman, isn't managing, it's flailing. It means as much in the evaluation of his career as Alex Rodriguez's poor series, or Randy Johnson's poor start, which is to say, very little. It's there, however, and it's part of the reason the Yankees lost.

I know that many of you dislike Alex Rodriguez and think I defend him too much, but the fact is that whatever you think of him, the SI article never should have happened. Torre and select "teammates" took a bad road trip by a player who had been in the league for 12 years, who had won the MVP award the year before, and overreacted to it. Rodriguez actually hit well in August, just as he had hit well in July, just as he would hit well in September. The story came out just in time to destroy his confidence all over again. Then Torre and his musical chairs lineups came in and compounded the situation.

In the final analysis, it's the manager's job to get the most out of his players. Not only did Torre fail to do that with Rodriguez (not that Rodriguez needed all that much help), but he actively undermined him. Rodriguez is one of the best players in baseball, and certainly among the most talented. The Yankees organization has devoted major resources to obtaining and paying him. It is not for any manager, even a future Hall of Famer like Torre, to lightly throw that player away. Now, though, possibly as a parting gesture, Torre has put the Yankees in a difficult position. He's alienated Rodriguez from the team, or at minimum from the manager. Both cannot return.

Hate Rodriguez as much as you like. Dealing him almost certainly pushes the Yankees further away from their next pennant. The whole situation reeks of hypocrisy. We're still waiting for the 2005 article on Derek Jeter, the one where various Yankees call him a fraud because he's batting .261, all singles, with runners in scoring position, and the same thing close and late. Further let he who is without sin cast the first World Series ring, because Rodriguez has been with the team only three years, but the Yankees haven't won a championship in six.

So, yes, maybe it's time. Because of A-Rod, because of the weird lineups, because two lefties sat in the bullpen in Game 2 when Curtis Granderson tripled in the seventh. Because the magic went away six years ago.

If Torre does go, I expect that either Piniella or Girardi will be hired, and if not them then someone very much like them, someone more authoritarian than Joe. That's the way baseball teams always operate. If the Yankees feel they have to pick the two, they should go with Girardi, because he'll turn 42 next week, whereas Piniella just turned 63. The Yankees need a skipper who is going to be in it for the long haul, who is not going to push the team to add even more veteran dead weight so it can win one more meaningless division title before he retires.

The Yankees say that they're a championship club and the season is a failure if they don't win the championship. That expectation is distorting the way they play and the way the team is maintained. The 2006 Yankees are no more the heirs to the 1996 and 1998-2000 champions than the 1984 Yankees were defending the 1978 championship. The Yankees won't go into 2007 as favorites to win the World Series. They won't have the pitching, and their veterans will be another year older. Those lowered expectations might be the best thing that has happened to the franchise in years. With no illusions either way, the team can set about building a champion instead of assuming they already have one.



From The Bergen Record:
Torre lost touch with his players
By Bob Klapisch

It was late August when Johnny Damon took a long, hard look around the clubhouse and was appalled at what he saw.

"Let's go [bleep-bleepers], wake up," Damon shouted. The center fielder had had enough of the Yankees' listlessness; it was so disturbingly different from the crazy energy he once shared with the Red Sox at Fenway. But instead of rallying the Yankees, Damon was met with silence.

That, and a cold stare across the room from Randy Johnson. Damon was so unnerved by the apathy, he later asked a team official, "Did I do something wrong?"

Sadly, that incident serves as a microcosm of the 2006 Yankees, and is why George Steinbrenner will soon fire Joe Torre. Despite the billion dollars he's spent since the last world championship in 2000, The Boss has only a series of October failures to show for it. The Yankees are rich, but soft. They can hit, but not when it counts. They talk about pinstripe tradition, but the roster is plagued by petty rivalries and jealousies that act as a cancer in the postseason.

Derek Jeter can't stand Alex Rodriguez and refuses to come to his defense. Mike Mussina doesn't like A-Rod, either, although, come to think of it, the Stanford grad hasn't much use for any of his teammates. No one talks to Johnson. Everyone thinks Carl Pavano is a joke. The Yankees' best pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, is isolated by his limited knowledge of English.

On and on, the list of dysfunctions keeps going. Instead of a dynasty, the Yankees have become a newer version of the Braves -- consistently outplayed by younger, hungrier teams such as the Diamondbacks (2001), the Angels (2002 and 2005), the Marlins (2003) and now the Tigers.

Steinbrenner has only two choices now: He can fire Torre or trade A-Rod. They're the ones who must answer to the Yankees' consistent underachievement.

By all accounts, The Boss already has decided it's Torre who'll go, ready to replace him with Lou Piniella. Brian Cashman will lobby to keep Torre, whom he considers a personal friend, but in this case, the general manager will be outvoted and the end of the Torre regime will come "in the next 24 to 48 hours" according to one person familiar with Steinbrenner's thinking.

Torre spent most of 11 seasons turning the Yankees into a class, mature organization that was once the envy of the industry. But little by little, his magic has dissolved. The Yankees have become addicted to the All-Star-at-every-position philosophy, and the bloating that's followed is found in more than just the payroll. The Yankees' egos are such that they no longer hustle their way to victories. Instead, they've been relying on nuclear superiority.

Most of the time, it worked. That lineup was indeed the best the American League has seen in decades, maybe ever. But there's still no substitute for hard work and old school enthusiasm. When the Yankees ran into a young team that refused to be intimidated, such as the Tigers, "They just curled up and died" said one major league executive. The Yankees somehow became convinced they could win by simply being the Yankees. They had no Plan B, and that's because Torre was so withdrawn from his troops.

Say this much for Joe Cool. He refused to fake his way through temper tantrums. He's not that kind of manager or person. But the Yankees need new fire now, which is why Piniella is warming up in the bullpen.

There are risks here, of course. Sweet Lou isn't nearly as media savvy as Torre and is certain to let his famous temper betray him sooner or later. The old newspaper wars with The Boss already are peeking over the horizon. But in the short term, he is exactly what the Yankees need.

Piniella also may be Rodriguez's last hope in New York. Finally, there'll be someone to act as A-Rod's advocate since it was never going to be Jeter, and it was obvious that Torre had no use for the third baseman, either. The decision to bat A-Rod in the Nos. 6 and 8 spots in the ALDS was an open declaration by Torre that he'd given up coddling A-Rod. It was Torre's way of telling Steinbrenner: It's him or me.

And that was the ultimatum that likely will cost Torre his job.

Maybe the Yankees will morph into a different team now. Maybe Piniella can get in peoples' faces the way he used to in the '80s. Maybe he can get A-Rod to stop feeling sorry for himself. Maybe Piniella can get Yankee fans off Rodriguez's back, too.

But if Sweet Lou replaces Torre, the first order of business will be to instill the old code of Yankee toughness that was the signature of the Billy Martin era. One scout who's watched the Yankees this year said, "It used to be that teams were afraid of the Yankees, but not anymore."

The Yankees never looked as tight as they did in Game 4 against the Tigers, which is exactly how they played Game 7 of the 2004 League Championship Series against the Red Sox, which was a clone of Game 4 against the Angels in last year's ALDS. Coincidence? Not anymore. It's become a pattern of failure.

Each time, Torre took the high road, refusing to blame anyone in the clubhouse. He's a good man who deserved greater effort from his millionaires. But it's also true that a team assumes the personality of its manager; the Yankees took Torre's calm and used it as an excuse to become docile.

The result? Everyone on the block knows the Yankees will crumble if you stand up to them.

And you know what they say about a bully: He's just a coward turned inside out.

From The Boston Globe:

Hoodfellas: Scorsese returns to mean streets
with a hit in 'The Departed'

By Ty Burr

Martin Scorsese won't be winning any Oscars for ``The Departed." The movie's too hard, too pulpy -- too good. A relentlessly violent, breathtakingly assured piece of mean-streets filmmaking, the film shows the legendary director dropping the bids for industry respectability that have preoccupied him over the past decade and doing what he does best: burrow to the agonized heart of criminality and let the blood and guilt splatter where they may.

Adapted from the 2002 Hong Kong action film ``Infernal Affairs" by the Dorchester-born screenwriter William Monahan , ``The Departed" is also the closest we've come yet to The Great Boston Movie, a beast that requires more honesty than filmmakers (and audiences) have been willing to grant. The film's only serious flaw is that it establishes a venal and local moral wasteland, crisscrossed by scummy realities of class and race, that it never follows up. What begins as a blood-soaked tragicomedy about our fair town's tribal warfare turns into merely a brilliant B movie. Don't let that keep you away.

``I don't want to be a product of my environment -- I want my environment to be a product of me." So says Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the satanic South Boston mobster who could be Whitey Bulger's even more evil twin. Narrating the film's opening passages against a backdrop of news footage of the 1974 anti-busing violence, Costello lays out his version of ethnic realpolitik: ``That's what the black chappies never realized. No one gives it to you. You have to take it."

Frank does, however, give a leg up to a starstruck neighborhood kid named Colin Sullivan, whom he grooms for a long-term project: grow up straight, join the police, be my in-house mole. By the time Colin is played by Matt Damon, he's a canny customer on track to department success -- a rising star with the State Police's special investigative unit headed by the glib, hard-driving Ellerby (Alec Baldwin). Their mission: Bring down the Irish mafia in general and Costello in particular. Colin's mission: keep ``dad" apprised of any incoming busts.

A separate undercover unit run by Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his hotheaded deputy Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) recruit their own L Street Brownie: Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a police academy misfit with a crooked family he wants to live down. In short order, Billy is jailed on a cooked-up assault, sent back on the streets, and works his way into Costello's mob as an informer.

That's the snappy mirror gimmick that drove ``Infernal Affairs" -- two rats reporting on their compatriots and, increasingly, each other -- and ``The Departed" takes the chess match to insanely complex levels. Both groups begin frantically seeking the traitor in their midsts, and when Colin is put in charge of the department search, he grimly realizes that he has to find himself.

At one point Billy stalks his opposite number to a meeting with Costello, and the sequence becomes a sadistic game of now-I-see-me/no-you-don't. Good and bad bleed into each other as these two sons of Southie come to understand they're brothers in battered spirit, and that only the other man can understand what each is going through.

Eventually the plot spins into free fall and the bodies start piling up. You don't mind because Scorsese is so in command of his medium, because the performances are juicy and committed, and because the violence feels viscerally real. When people throw punches in ``The Departed," they break their hands; when one character falls several stories to the pavement, the blowback is defiantly unpretty. Costello toys absent - mindedly with an anonymous severed hand before asking an underling to ``get rid of this." ``The Departed" follows the consequences of bloodshed and betrayal all the way to the ugly end, and you won't feel like celebrating afterward .

Monahan's dialogue is filthy and funny, bristling with tabloid poetry: ``Your family's dug into the Southie projects like ticks"; ``You're a black guy in Boston -- you don't need my help to be completely [expletive]." The central performances are tremendous, too, and for once the local accents are spot-on (mostly; Sheen's still doing the Kennedys). This is DiCaprio's best work in a long while, and he makes you feel the suicidal craziness of ``having to be a different guy every day." Damon's playing a more multi-leveled game, though, and under that mashed pretty-boy face we glimpse a whole spectrum of rat emotion: greed, ambition, cowardice, and a pathetic sort of loyalty.

Wahlberg almost steals the film as a pit bull of a Statie -- every time he shows up you start grinning -- and Nicholson does steal everything that's not nailed down. Frank Costello could be Jack Torrance from ``The Shining" given a new lease on life and scraped clean of all human scruple. He's a joyfully vulgar psycho, a creature of pure id. You don't try to understand this guy -- as someone says, quoting Sigmund Freud, the Irish ``are the only people impervious to psychoanalysis" -- you just run like hell.

For all the excellence of the performances (which includes Vera Farmiga as a police shrink drawn to both Damon and DiCaprio; her accent's wobbly but the acting's right), this is a director's return to form. When Scorsese misfires here, cueing the Rolling Stones' ``Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack yet again or giving Colin a high-rise apartment with a patently fake view of the State House dome, you're inclined to forgive him. When ``The Departed" roars to life, as it does in so many of its scenes, you feel like nobody understands movies -- the delirious highs, the unforgiving moral depths -- as well as this man does. Welcome back, Marty.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com



From Newsweek:

Get That Mole Removed

Scorsese returns in grand style with 'The Departed,'
the brutal—and hilarious—tale of two snitches.

By David Ansen

Oct. 9, 2006 issue - Martin Scorsese's profanely funny, savagely entertaining "The Departed" is both a return to the underworld turf he's explored in such classics as "Mean Streets" and "GoodFellas" and a departure. What's new is that he's hitched his swirling, white-hot style to the speeding wagon of narrative. For all his brilliance, storytelling has never been his forte or his first concern. Here he has the devilishly convoluted plot of the terrific 2002 Hong Kong cop thriller "Infernal Affairs" to work from, and it's a rich gift.

Screenwriter William Monahan has done a terrific job transposing the story to ethnically fraught Boston. He's added many savory (and unsavory) new elements while staying true to the cat-and-mouse twists and turns of Alan Mak and Felix Chong's original script. (Strangely, there's no acknowledgment that it's a remake until deep into the end credits.) "The Departed" is the tale of two moles. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is a clean-cut rising star in the Boston Police Department's Special Investigative Unit, which is determined to bring down the kingpin of the Irish-American mob, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). But in fact he's Costello's man, groomed since childhood to infiltrate the police force. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who grew up trying to escape from his working-class, criminal background, is now up to his neck in mob activities, working as Costello's trusted associate. What only two people in the world know is that he's actually a cop, planted to tip the police to his boss's every move. Desperately unhappy to be forced into the identity he tried to escape, he's becoming emotionally unraveled. The plot thickens when both sides realize that there's an informer in their midst, and the search for the rat begins. The task of uncovering the mole inside the force is assigned to Sullivan, who is the mole, while the paranoid, volatile Costigan must pretend to find the mob's Judas before he gets discovered and whacked. Complicating matters further, both men fall for the same woman, the psychotherapist Madeleine (Vera Farmiga), who doesn't know either's secret.

The symmetries and complications are pitched on the edge of absurdity, and Scorsese dives headfirst into the fray, simultaneously playing it for maximum suspense and a kind of mad, blood-spattered comedy. You often find yourself laughing and gasping at the same time. Nicholson's gaudy, racist, foulmouthed mobster, first shown only in satanic shadows, is a flamboyantly depraved villain, and Jack plays him with Jacobean gusto. But the entire cast is firing on all cylinders. The first half of the movie belongs to Damon, oozing the confidence, charm and false modesty of a master deceiver. DiCaprio, his eyes unable to mask the torment of a man whose identity is slipping away from him, dominates the second half. This is DiCaprio's coming-of-age role: he's finally put boyhood behind him. Then there's Mark Wahlberg's mad-dog Ser-geant Dignam, a cop whose default mode is raging irrational hostility; Alec Baldwin's hilariously blunt police supervisor Ellerby; Martin Sheen's Queenan, who calls the shots for Costigan and is as much his father figure as Costello is for Sullivan. It's a great ensemble, rounded out by Farmiga's smart, decidedly unconventional shrink.

"The Departed" is Scorsese's most purely enjoyable movie in years. But it's not for the faint of heart. It's rude, bleak, violent and defiantly un-PC. But if you doubt that it's also OK to laugh throughout this rat's nest of paranoia, deceit and bloodshed, keep your eyes on the final frames. Scorsese's parting shot is an uncharacteristic, but well-earned, wink.

From waswatching.com:
No Joking

"This town needs an enema!" - The Joker, in Batman (circa 1989)

I've been thinking about the Yankees this evening - now about five hours past the end of their 2006 season. And...that famous Joker quote will not leave my head.

The days of O'Neill, Stanton, Tino, Pettitte, Brosius, Cone, Knoblauch, Nelson, Girardi, Mendoza, Curtis and Wells are long gone. Sure, Jeter, Mo, Posada, and, to an extent, Bernie remain. But, three or four men cannot carry a ballclub.

The A-Rod's, Giambi's, Mussina's, Sheffield's, and Big Units that have been with the Yankees recently have corner-stoned a half-decade of post-season failure for the Yankees.

It's time to purge this Yankees team of it's current supposed cadre of strength and attempt to re-boot the timbre of the team. The Yankees need a shift of position with respect to their mental modus operandi. They need to get away from a prevailing false sense of entitlement and placid demeanor and adopt a greater sense of urgency and aggressive nature.

The Yankees need to recapture that hunger which finds failure unacceptable. This team needs to retool with the mindset of "We must take it, if we want it. Otherwise, if we assume that it's just going to happen, we will be let down."

And, this not only includes playing personnel - it means the manager as well. I found this in the Times this evening (regarding the Yankees) to be interesting:

But the most intriguing question will be the futures of Manager Joe Torre and Rodriguez.

Torre has just one year left on his contract, and the magic he once wielded in the postseason has disappeared. There are club executives who wonder if he should be back, and others in the organization who have noticed that Torre has not won a pennant since the resignation of the bench coach Don Zimmer in October 2003.

The Yankees have lost their last three playoff series, and are 3-10 in the postseason since taking a three-games-to-none lead over Boston in the 2004 American League Championship Series.

Joe Torre had never been to the mountain top prior to 1996. Then, he lived on top of the mountain for several years to follow. In 2001, Torre fell off the mountain. And, while Joe has tried to re-climb the mountain several times now - over the last 5 years - it's just not happening for him and his camp. As the Times author wrote "the magic he once wielded" has "disappeared."

It's time for new blood in Yankeeland. The old blood is tired.

The Yankees should allow Sheffield and Mussina to go. The Yankees should look into trading Alex Rodriguez. If there's a way, the Yankees should look to move Giambi - even if it means paying part of his salary and getting lesser players in return. The Yankees need to not rely on Randy Johnson anymore and get, at least, two pitchers in their prime for their starting rotation.

And, they should get a new, hungry, aggressive, and passionate manager to set the new tempo and lead this team.

If the Yankees do nothing, then nothing will happen. No joking.

From The Dallas Morning News:

Amish faith shines, even in tragic darkness
By Rod Dreher

Friday, October 6, 2006

Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace, restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt so defiled – there is no more precise word – by news of the mass murders that took place there this week. If you're not safe in an Amish schoolhouse ... And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most shocking news to come out of Lancaster County this week.

No, that would be the revelation that the Amish community, which buried five of its little girls this week, is collecting money to help the widow and children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their own children before taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News on Tuesday that this is normal for them. It's what Jesus would have them do.

"This is imitation of Christ at its most naked," journalist Tom Shachtman, who has chronicled Amish life, told The New York Times . "If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in our society, it's going to be the Amish. I don't want to denigrate anybody else who says they're imitating Christ, but the Amish walk the walk as much as they talk the talk."

I don't know about you, but that kind of faith is beyond comprehension. I'm the kind of guy who will curse under my breath at the jerk who cuts me off in traffic on the way home from church. And look at those humble farmers, putting Christians like me to shame.

It is not that the Amish are Anabaptist hobbits, living a pure pastoral life uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. So much of the coverage of the massacre has dwelled on the "innocence lost" aspect, but I doubt that the Amish would agree. They have their own sins and tragedies. Nobody who lives in a small town can live under the illusion that it is a haven from evil. To paraphrase gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil does not run along the boundaries of Lancaster County, but through every human heart.

What sets hearts apart is how they deal with sins and tragedies. In his suicide note, Mr. Roberts said one reason he did what he did was out of anger at God for the death of his infant daughter in 1997. Wouldn't any parent wonder why God allowed that to happen? Mr. Roberts held onto his hatred, purifying it under pressure until it exploded in an act of infamy. That's one way to deal with anger.

Another is the Amish way. If Mr. Roberts' rage at God over the death of his baby girl was in some sense understandable, how much more comprehensible would be the rage of those Amish mothers and fathers whose children perished by his hand? Had my child suffered and died that way, I cannot imagine what would have become of me, for all my pretenses of piety. And yet, the Amish do not rage. They do not return evil for evil. In fact, they embody peace and love beyond all human understanding.

In our time, religion makes the front pages usually in the ghastliest ways. In the name of God, the faithful fly planes into buildings, blow themselves up to murder the innocent, burn down rival houses of worship, insult and condemn and cry out to heaven for vengeance. The wicked Rev. Fred Phelps and his crazy brood of fundamentalist vipers even planned to protest at the Amish children's funeral, until Dallas-based radio talker Mike Gallagher, bless him, gave them an hour of his program if they would only let those poor people bury their dead in peace.

But sometimes, faith helps ordinary men and women do the humanly impossible: to forgive, to love, to heal and to redeem. It makes no sense. It is the most sensible thing in the world. The Amish have turned this occasion of spectacular evil into a bright witness to hope. Despite everything, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor. The views expressed here are his own. His e-mail address is rdreher@dallasnews.com