It’s starting to sound like the constitutional referendum in Iraq last weekend was run by a bunch of Chicago ward-heelers rather than by a fledgling committee of Muslim and Kurdish locals. In some precincts, the proposed constitution was approved by more than 95% of the voters. This brings to mind the good old days not only in the Windy City, but in the Eastern bloc. Commie lackeys who ran for a seat on the duma could always count on polling 99 percent of the vote, since any rabble-rouser who dared abstain risked being dragooned from his bed in the middle of the night by Beria’s constabulary.

Ah, Russia! What kind of citizenry goes 99% for someone like Yuri Andropov in an election? A cynical one, we have no doubt. The Politburo back then made Tony Soprano’s gang look a bunch of deacons, but could they handle today’s Islamists? Vladimir Putin has employed the hardball tactics of his KGB progenitors in dealing with Chechnyan rebels. But it is a measure of the Islamists’ resolve, and of their tactical underhandedness, that Russia is having so little success controlling the insurgency as it sinks deeper and deeper roots in the Caucasus.

The U.S. appears to be doing better in Iraq. At least Islamic terrorists there are no longer running roughshod in Baghdad. And word the other day that 70 supposed insurgents were exterminated comes as good news to the civilized world. But what to make of the overwhelming approval of a U.S.-backed constitution for Iraq? A case of the U.S. getting more than we might have wished for, perhaps? Whatever the case, we’re not likely to see a second ballot or even a recount.. It was definitely not be the kind of plebiscite Jefferson and Hamilton had in mind. But for now, it will have to do.