The mass murder of innocent civilians in the Moscow Metro suicide bombings on Monday (3/29) has again brought into focus the evil of radical Islamism and the imperative of civilized people everywhere to stop it.

As clear-cut a case of Islamist barbarism as it is, however, it is difficult to make sense of the spiraling violence in Russia without reference to Vladimir Putin's disastrous anti-terrorism policies.

A Moslem terrorist group from Chechnia - a province in a region of southern Russia called the North Caucasus - has claimed responsibility for the attack.  It is the latest incident in a long struggle between the Chechens and their Russian overlords.

Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, President Putin from the very beginning of his tenure in the Kremlin ten years ago showed himself completely unwilling to consider any negotiated settlement with the Chechens.  He pursued a strictly military solution, and set up a puppet regime in the Chechen capital of Grozny instead.

Putin's attitude is characterized by his vulgar promise to the resistance to "rub them out in the latrine."  He made that promise in 1999.  This week he slightly rephrased it, promising the resistance will be "scrapped from the sewers."  Thus we could call his anti-terrorism policy Putin's Sewer Strategy.  Unfortunately for him, it is his strategy that is in the toilet, not the terrorists.

Which of the following families is "richer"?

The first family consists of a wife who has recently become a medical doctor, and she makes $160,000 per year. Her husband is a small business entrepreneur who makes $110,000 per year, giving them a total family income of $270,000 per year.

However, they are still paying off the loans the wife took out for medical school and the loans the husband took out to start his business, amounting to debts of $300,000. Their total assets are valued at $450,000; hence, their real net worth or wealth (the difference between gross assets and liabilities) is only $150,000.

The second family consists of a trial lawyer who took early retirement and his non-working wife. They have an annual income of $230,000, all of it derived from interest on tax-free municipal bonds they own. However, their net worth is $7 million, consisting of $5 million in bonds, a million-dollar home with no mortgage, and a million dollars in art work, home furnishings, automobiles and personal items.

The second family is clearly far better off financially than the first family, yet many in the U.S. Congress, including Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, want to increase taxes on the first (and poorer) family and not on the wealthier family.

Here's the question of the week:  Why do Democrat presidents insist on having evil idiot lesbians in their Cabinet?

It would be very hard for an American to be more evil than Bill Clinton's alcoholic lesbian Attorney General Janet Reno - as revealed years ago in America's Saddam.

Now it seems that another lesbian named Janet -- Zero's DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano - wants to try.  Lucky for us, she's even more of a moron than Ms. Reno.

After labeling anyone with conservative small government/prolife views a "right-wing extremist" and Iraq war veterans as potential terrorists - then completing an imbecile hat trick by blaming Canada for 9/11 - it's small wonder that demands for her resignation are growing.

She has quickly become a complete laughingstock in Canada.  The National Post, one of the country's major papers, wants to know how she got her job, because she is "as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo."

But she's also not the only Dem laughingstock this week - here are three more.

It's wretched enough that our "friend" Ahmed Chalabi has become Iran's point man in Iraq. Now "our man in Kabul," President Hamid Karzai, is quietly shifting his loyalty to Tehran.

Beyond Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's recent chummy visit to Karzai -- reported by the media but downplayed by Washington -- Iran's been training Taliban forces to kill our troops more efficiently.

Karzai hasn't complained. Nor has he objected to Tehran's expansion of its support for its clients in western Afghanistan. He wants that support for himself.

Far from being a gleaming apostle of democracy, Karzai's just another hustler from the lands that perfected the con. Like Chalabi, he knew the magic words to say to Americans, then did whatever he wanted for himself, his fantastically corrupt family and his cronies.

Karzai's people despise him; his allies distrust him; his enemies mock him. And our troops keep him in power. Does that sound like a formula for success? One that we should ask our soldiers to risk their lives for?

We can raise a full glass of your favorite adult beverage to all the Tea Party participants - and to the one group of Americans the Zerocrats despise above all others:  our soldiers in the US military.

All of us want to raise our glass the highest this week to the Navy SEALs who popped those three Somali pirates.  And I'm sure you want to hear the real story of what happened.   Especially because there is a revoltingly opportunistic and cowardly side to it.  Guess which side Zero is on.

Why, for example, did it take SEAL Team Six (aka DEVGRU, Navy Special Warfare Development Group, the Navy's equivalent of Delta Force) over 36 hours to get to the scene?

Because Zero refused to authorize the SEAL deployment for those 36 hours, during which the OSC - the on scene commander, Cmdr. Frank Castellano of the USS Bainbridge - repeatedly requested them.

Two of the following three news stories are true and one is not. Which ones do you think are true?

Story No. 1:
"A new commission appointed by Norway will investigate ways of putting a stop to the huge flows of money into tax havens. Tax evasion and corruption are believed to cost poor countries at least $50 billion a year (according to an estimate by Oxfam International)."

Story No. 2:
"A new commission created by several small low-income non-oil producing nations was established to seek ways of forcing oil rich nations to share their oil revenue with poor nations."

Story No. 3:
"Senators declare war on offshore havens. Congressional scrutiny of the offshore vehicles used by companies, investment funds and wealthy individuals is increasing."

An alliance between the Marxist Left and Jihad Islam - known as the Red-Green Alliance - is on the march. 

Israel is not the only target of the Red-Green alliance. Its operations span the globe. In Nigeria on Sunday night (3/07), the Jihadists led the charge. With the apparent collaboration of the Moslem-dominated Nigerian army, Moslem gangs entered three predominantly Christian villages around the city of Jos and killed innocent civilians, including children with machetes, axes, and daggers.

The worldwide leftist media ignored the atrocity - or said it had nothing to do with religion.  And while this was going on, Joe Biden was in Israel -- and promptly showed where the Obama administration's true sympathies lay:  with the Red-Green Alliance.

Ahh, Friday.  Here in the US, folks say TGIF.  Our British cousins, however, say THITWA - thank heavens it's the weekend again.  Time to settle in to a quiet corner booth in the HFR Saloon with a pint of Theakston's Old Peculier real ale, and enjoy reading a good British newspaper, the London Telegraph.

Particularly today (4/10), as the Brits simply unload on Zero, giving him a new nickname, President Pantywaist.  Calling him "the new surrender monkey" for his performance at the G20, they note his Europe trip is "the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow."

And you thought he was losing popularity on our side of the Pond.

***
Let's stay overseas for awhile. Some good things are happening.

Villa Santa Colomba, Sienna, Italy.  Robert Mundell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1999, has been holding a small, annual conference here in Tuscany at an exquisite castle he purchased several decades ago and restored.

His wife, Valerie, is a charming hostess and an accomplished organizer of the conferences. The castle is the family's principal residence, though Dr. Mundell continues to teach one semester each year at New York's Columbia University, where he is a professor of economics.

To get fresh ideas about the current global economic problems of the day, Dr. Mundell invites not only academic economists to his conferences but also central bankers and other financial and business professionals to obtain a variety of perspectives.

Some of the questions discussed at the conference will be found below, and you may wish to think about them yourselves. But first, the good news is that...

Threats, bombs and at least 36 dead didn't stop Iraqis from voting on Sunday, March 7. But the harder part -- forming a new, more inclusive national government -- lies ahead.

Formal results won't come for a few days. We'll learn how many votes, authentic and fraudulent, went to each of the big five parties and fringe elements. But the news looks good, so far. There are solid grounds for sober optimism and the expectation of slowly improving government in Baghdad. The elections happened. And they were genuinely contested -- not merely on ethnic or religious lines but on national issues, as well.

For all its tragic missteps, the Bush administration may have done a great thing in the end: Democracy in Iraq may work to a serviceable degree. That would, indeed, change the Middle East for the better over time.  History may owe President Bush a great debt of gratitude.