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.

Are you aware that without speculators, most food and physical products would cost a whole lot more?

Because many members of Congress don't possess a mirror, they have been looking for the villain who is causing gasoline prices to soar. A large number, mostly but not exclusively Democrats, have decided that speculators, or at least "greedy speculators," are the villains.

Many members of Congress make up "solutions" to things they do not understand and cause problems where there are none or make real problems worse, which explains the current run-up in gasoline prices.

I was wrong. For years, I've argued that our government should pay more attention to South America. Now Hillary Clinton has -- and, boy, is it ugly.

With tragic back-to-back earthquakes dominating the headlines from south of the border, a desperate ploy by the hard-left Argentine government -- backed by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez -- threatens to shake the continent's political landscape.

And Secretary of State Clinton, during her whirlwind tour down south, managed to outrage our British allies and assist despised President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in her family's assault on Argentine democracy.

Clinton's diplomatic malfeasance in Buenos Aires wasn't an accident. She spoke for President Obama, who loves Third World liberation rhetoric and seems to think Britain's still colonizing his family home in Kenya.

Here's the backstory that our media's ignored:

The HFR raises a glass of Newcastle Brown ale to the British hero of the week, Daniel Hannan.

As a Member of the European Parliament for Southeast England (Kent, Surrey, Sussex et al), he delivered a 3-minute speech on Tuesday (3/24) directed at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who was attending the session in Brussels.

It is the most devastating skewering of a politician right to his face in modern memory.  His accusation that Mr. Brown has "a pathological inability to accept responsibility" applies equally to Democrats in Congress and their president.

As you watch the speech - only 3 minutes - you'll probably ask:  Where is our Daniel Hannan?  Where is an American politician with the wit, the eloquence, and the courage to similarly skewer Zero?

Imagine a fellow who lives in a dry county in Mississippi (where alcohol is not sold or served) goes to New York and has a drink at a bar where he knows the bartender. Shortly thereafter, the bartender visits his friend in that dry county in Mississippi. The local sheriff arrests both the bartender and his friend for an act committed in New York.

Most people, quite properly so, would argue the Mississippi sheriff has no business arresting people for a legal act committed in New York, even though it would have been illegal if committed in Mississippi.

Unfortunately, some prosecutors in the U.S. federal government are now acting like the rogue Mississippi sheriff described above when it comes to gambling, securities and tax laws in foreign countries.